Out to eat: View

Seared scallops with butternut squash mashed potatoes, local asparagus and candied bacon jam at View (Credit: Amie Dworecki | Metromix)

View is a restaurant in a residential building on Victory Parkway, so named because you can sit on its big deck overlooking the Ohio River and soak in the scenery as you eat.

But what happens when you go to View and get a table that offers you very little to look at, besides your dining companion and people dancing in the bar area?

Here's what happens: You get a meal so good you forget where you are.

We went to View on a Friday night, when it was still too chilly to eat outside. After a little confusion - View isn't the easiest place to find - we wandered through the Edgecliff building and into a beautiful little restaurant owned by the same couple that opened Bella Luna in 2003. Harry and Gay Stephens' latest venture offers what View calls "an inspired twist on American cuisine," which means there is truffle oil in the mac and cheese, lamb in the meatloaf and bacon jam with the scallops. I call it "fancy comfort food."

A note for the cost-conscious: The menu also has a three-course prix fixe meal for a steal at just $25. When we were there, the selections included coconut shrimp, lamb lentil soup and prime rib cannelloni, but don't count on seeing these dishes again - the prix fixe menu changes weekly.

After ordering a starter drink and feasting on some warm-up bread, my companion and I shared the macaroni and cheese, a rich dish packed with white cheddar, smoked Gouda and crab meat. It was mac and cheese done right - piping hot and crunchy on top. We used our bread to scrape up the last bits of cheese.

Next up was the warm goat cheese and spinach salad, which we split with the approval of our server. A half portion turned out to be perfect - a handful of spinach leaves atop a wedge of goat cheese with a few dried cherries, the whole thing tossed with blueberry vinaigrette.

I'd gone with the candied bacon jam scallops for dinner, while he had the View meatloaf. My dish was three beautifully seared scallops sitting atop a bed of mashed potatoes with a pile of asparagus. I'm always worried scallops are going to be gritty or rubbery, but these were perfect, complemented by the sweet-savory bacon jam. The meatloaf was huge and hearty, though I wasn't a fan of the smoky tomato marmalade that made the dish taste strangely similar to corned beef. With apologies to the chef, we scraped the marmalade aside and enjoyed the flavor of the lamb.

The reason I can no longer fit in my pants is that we didn't stop here. No, when the dessert tray came along, we sampled not one but two sweets.

The cookie dough pie was basically a big, thick cookie in pie form topped with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. You can't go wrong with that. However, if we had settled for just that, we would have missed out on the rich, lovely chocolate chip-blueberry bread pudding, which inspired me to write poetry and build a shrine to bread pudding that has since, unfortunately, collapsed. Seriously, it's worth the increased pants size.

Notice I haven't mentioned the view at View? Yeah, I totally forgot about it. Instead, I was in a happy haze of good food and wine and the music of Harry Stephens, who did cover songs with his band in the bar area. If I can return to View with an outdoor seat, a vista of the Ohio and a big helping of bread pudding, I'm a little afraid at how happy I'd be. Maybe happy enough to dance with the band.