Review of Cooper's Hawk

Cooper's Hawk opened at Easton Town Center in Columbus on Monday this week. Imagine my excitement when I saw they offered a gluten-free menu and my first thought was "I have to try it immediately."

So by Wednesday, I was eating there for the first time. Check out the size of this gluten-free menu....

They even have 5 gluten-free desert options!

I told our waitress about my gluten allergy and she made sure the kitchen knew I was there. They brought out the pretzel bread for my dinner date and a gluten-free bun for me to try.

We started with an appetizer of shrimp wrapped in bacon - delicious. The shrimp were large and I easily got 2-3 bites out of them.

Dinner was the pepper jack, bacon cheeseburger - the bun was a little much for me since I already had one when we first got there so I ended up eating the burger naked. There were several sides I could select from and I ended up with Mary's mashed potatoes.

I got a gluten-free brownie to take home and shared it with my husband. It was simply delicious. Light, fluffy and moist!

The manager even came out after my meal to make sure everything was ok and I enjoyed my meal. He explained the gluten-free process and that they are very sensitive to cross contamination and pride themselves on making safe gluten-free experiences for their guests.

After this tasty meal, I decided to bring my family last night to try something new on the menu. They've already been to all the places around us to eat so it was a great change for them to try something new.

Last night's meal blew the lid off of any other gluten-free meal I've had at other places. Wildfire Chicago is a close second to this dish.

I decided to try something totally new and went with the short rib risotto and it was best decision I've ever made. The meat was tender, moist and fell apart with my fork into the risotto. The sauce was incredible and the truffle oil on top with parmesan shavings tied everything together perfectly.

We ended the meal with some chocolate covered strawberries. They were ok, not the best but then again it's hard to compete with Godiva strawberries. I just didn't think they were ripe enough before being covered in the chocolate.

I do have one comment about the restaurant - we had reservations at 7:30pm. While we didn't wait longer than 5 minutes for our table, imagine our confusion when they were quoting people a 2-3 hour wait for a table and then there were at least 10-15 empty tables in the dining room when we were seated. Maybe it was lack of staff, but it was strange in my book.