If the bright blue sign with the words “eat” and “drink” flanking it don’t clearly define Zing Eat/Drink, then the food and drinks certainly do.
Located in the former Blue Moon restaurant on Blue Star Highway, the Douglas eatery stands out with its peppy, zippy-sounding moniker.
The interior tickles all the senses, featuring art, animal print fabrics and walls, sueded textures and festive, colorful lighting. The various area of the restaurant provide a perfect combo of intimate feeling with contemporary openness — aspects of formalness, and yet an understated casualness. The bar exudes hipness, with a chartreuse baby grand piano as the centerpiece of the cabaret area that screams “let’s have some fun!”
Zing’s website describes the eatery as “playfully eclectic…that takes the ordinary to the extraordinary with an unexpected twist on the expected.”
We were allowed to choose the table we wanted and settled in the corner and were soon greeted by our enthusiastic and knowledgeable server “Star.” She gave advice and didn’t steer us wrong. After a few questions about the menu and considering the Scallops in Puff Pastry ($12), and The Wedgie ($9) — iceberg with blue cheese — I decided on the Grilled Marinated Steak Salad ($13).
The salad was a large portion, with a mound of slices of d juicy, flavorful steak, and all of the accompanying vegetables arranged so you could incorporate them, or avoid them as you chose. So, I worked in the ingredients as I liked. It was served with smoked provolone, avocado, red onion, cucumber and tomato over mixed greens. It was tasty and filling, however, and I thoroughly enjoyed it, and. I sampled both the homemade bleu cheese and avocado dressings, and they made the flavors of the marinade — a sweet citrus blend — pop.
I realize now that there was no avocado on the salad. I also overheard them tell another diner they were out of the scallops. However, this once, I’ll forgive them for that, and chalk it up to a few stocking issues since they had just opened.
My friend chose the inventive Grilled Veggie Rolls ($9). These were like a sushi roll with thin slices of grilled eggplant, zucchini and portabella, wrapped around a center of roasted garlic goat “cheeze” and red pepper sauce. She said they were tasty, but unlike my huge portion, there were three rolls, and when it arrived, she said she wished she had gotten two orders.
I thought the most interesting thing on the menu might be one of the “entreez” called the Zinginton ($29), which is Zing’s version of Beef Wellington, featuring a prime filet with creamed spinach and bacon wrapped in puff pastry served over sweet caramelized onions.
Zing offers three menus — breakfast, lunch/dinner and a late night bar offering. Each are full of “zing-afied” dishes to amuse and tempt.
The breakfast menu made me want to make a trip just to try the array of delicious sounding items. Between the blueberry cheesecake French toast or German cinnamon apple pancakes, a spicy egg & cheeze scramble, the Zing omelet with lobster, shrimp and goat cheeze, flakey pastry Florentine or the signature Croizingwich, I’m not sure which I’d pick on my next visit.
The bar menu features pumped-up bar food such as the Zing burger, grilled Caribbean chicken, Chef Will’s cheese and European meat plate, steak frittes and Uncle Ivo’s pasta with rustic meat sauce.
There is also a chartreuse piano, and a cabaret-type stage area where there are promised “zing-alongs,” bound to get more and more fun as the evening unwinds as the crowd enjoys their “zing-tinis” — one named (as we’d expect by now) Zing on the Beach.
With the interior dining room, fanciful piano/zing-tini bar, exterior covered “living room,” casual party tent in the back , three menus, long hours and delicious innovative food, Zing Eat/Drink offers something for everyone and is likely to be one of my new favorites.
