Porter Creek Hardwood Grill

Great lunch… Italian sausage frittata with chicken tortilla soup! Yum! Great service and a beautiful restaurant! Fair prices!

I absolutely love this place. Everyone that I have ever brought here, loves this place! It is a nice, classy but rustic, relaxing feel with good food and great service. I don’t have a single complaint. They have a lot of woodwork, tile and an outdoor fire pit that is great on the cool Minnesota nights or during the chilly season. I have been here several times and have been here with different parts of my family without a single complaint. This place gives me the luxury cabin feel. Please check out the pictures that I have posted to see some of the food. I will be going back, so I will add more. I am not sure why I haven’t reviewed this place a long time ago. This place is one of my favorite places to take guests to eat! Enjoy!

I can’t believe it doesn’t have 5 stars! It seams like it’s been around for a while and it is always packed. Good luck finding parking in the lot (don’t worry there is plenty of parking on the street). Usually good restaurants have a sweet beginning and then go down hill but they have managed to continue being superb. Great dishes with amazing happy hour specials. Last time I went they had great deals on there tasty flat bread pizzas. Wide range of wine and drinks and the atmosphere is just amazing! I would kill to have a place theirs (reminds me of a spectacular cabin).

My mom & I went on a lunch date here. We shouldn’t have! All I ordered was a salad with the dressing on the side & no peppers. Sounds easy enough, right? Apparently not. The manager brings my salad out about 5 minutes after my mom had already gotten her meal and it was covered with dressing. My waitress came over & right away when she saw my salad she said «I’m so sorry, let me get you a new one!» 10 min later the manager brought me a new salad, phew, dressing on the side but now covered with peppers! At this point my mom was more than halfway done with her meal. I considered picking all the peppers out but there were a ton. The waitress comes over & I let her know. She was very apologetic and very nice and said «would you like me to get you another one?» I wasn’t gonna eat that one! So I said, «yeah, I guess!» So another 10 minutes goes by & this time the manager didn’t come out, the waitress did… he was probably too embarrassed & didn’t want to do his job & take responsibility for their error. Man up buddy! Your the manager! Screw ups are on you! Well, I finally get the correct salad. You would think at this point they would comp it??? NOPE! An apology is all ya get when they screw up TWICE and you have to eat your meal after the ones at the table are already done eating. I don’t know what any restaurant is thinking when they mess up (& someone’s not pulling a fast one) and they don’t comp the meal or do something to make a customer want to come back! Cuz guess what, they just lost a customer & someone that brings friends & family out to eat for gatherings. It’s a pretty restaurant and our waitress was so nice but I’ll never go back there! They even got my email address and nobody sent me an email or anything. Pitiful customer service. I am a business owner and that will never happen at my business!
Btw…the salad wasn’t even that great! I’d give it 3 out of 5. My mom felt the same about her food. The beautiful ambience is pretty much all you get here! I say just stick to ordering a drink at the bar or on the outdoor patio in the summer!

I had a great dining experience at Porter Creek while having dinner there for work. Our server was extremely knowledgeable in terms of the menu. When my two dining companions asked for beer and wine recommendations or a description of a specific beer she was able to provide extremely detailed and helpful descriptions. The same was true of her knowledge of the food items on the menu. She was friendly, attentive and top-​notch.
We ordered the Goat Cheese Balls and Beets for an appetizer. Anyone who likes beets is likely to enjoy this dish. If you are like me and don’t really care for beets you can still enjoy this appetizer since fried goat cheese fixes just about anything. For my meal I went for the Southwest Salad. It was really tasty with chicken, bell pepper, corn, avocado and some tortilla for a nice crunch factor. The chipoltle-​lime vinaigrette does a great job of rounding out this flavorful salad. The dish was filling and left me satisfied.

Yum — scallops are so delicious and the cocktails are great too. Love the atmosphere and have always had nice, friendly and attentive service.

Great outdoor area… food is not why you go.
This is another Minnesota restaurant with a great atmosphere and a terrific outdoor area but the food just isn’t good. The potential here is untapped. Based on all the positive reviews, there are a lot of people that like rotisserie chicken, flatbread and over cooked fish and steak.

I will preface by saying I was here on labor day, so perhaps the chefs were off on holiday but I was highly disappointed in the food. I wouldn’t normally post a review, but i did complain, and I didn’t feel validated in my complaint so I’m posting here. .
First the service was fine, nor great, but fine, and the ambience especially outside is fantastic.. I’d love to go back for appetizers and drinks and sit by the fire, but not for dinner.
Mostly the discription of the food didn’t match what came out. I ordered the special, salmon with chipotle mashed potatoes, hicama salad on top, and garnished with gazpacho. Sounds delicious but I got a red goop on my plate. Salmon on top of red potatos and the red gazpacho inside it somewhere and the hicama red and maybe fried (?) on top. It just looked like a soggy mess. I ate the salmon but red potatos and hicama was just goop so I ordered a second dish. Yep I was hungry still. So I ordered a salad but my chopped salad was even worse.
It came with 8 pieces of lettuce, 6 black beans, a teaspoon of avacado a bit of other stuff and 2 cups of tortilla strips. It was advertised as a chopped chicken salad with the list of ingredients, but no lettuce, no chopping and no extras except for 6 black beans (I counted) and a teaspoon of avacado. Got it?
I talked to the manager who said they don’t include lettuce as they have other expensive ingredients included. Really? I asked for lettuce which they did give me, but doesn’t come out chopped, in fact none of the ingredients were chopped. A quick google search shows what a chopped salad looks like but the manager got defensive and says it was the chefs interpretation. Fine but it was advertised as a CHOPPED salad… hence my review

Porter creek restaurant in Burnsville has some delicious, mouth watering appetizers on sale for 50% off after 9 pm every night. And you can enjoy your delicious food and cocktails outside by the warm inviting fire pits. A nice selection of both wines and beers to choose from. A great ambiance and good service make porter creek a great place for late night snacks and drinks.

Excellent atmosphere for a family lunch or dinner! I would recommend the pork chop or chicken in their rotisserie oven. Ohh the wings were out of this world.

I really want to like this restaurant more. Walking in on a warm summer night, admiring the landscaping, patio and the building architecture I want the food to be as great as it looks. It’s just not. I’ve been here twice, and both times the food has been solidly MEH. Sadly, the pricing is outrageous for the food quality.
I ordered the ceviche the first time I was here and remembered it as a standout from that visit. This time? Blech. A big dish of pico de gallo with tiny shrimp and bay scallops buried in it. With stale, over-​salted tortilla chips on the side. My daughter and I both ordered the tortilla soup, she enjoyed it but I found mine lacking in flavor and not at all substantial. My husband had their chicken chowder and thought it was great. He wasn’t as fond of their buffalo walleye fingers. I’m not a fan of buffalo seasoning, so I took a pass on even trying them. The fluorescent orange batter was not enticing.
For my entrée, I had the salmon with roasted corn sauce, mashed potatoes and balsamic onions. Oh… and it was topped with an alarming amount of shoestring french fries. Why? I have no idea. They were cold and unnecessary given the fish sits on a bed of mashed potatoes. Didn’t really like the corn sauce, too sweet. I wasn’t asked how I wanted the salmon cooked and found it dry and overdone. Daughter had the steak special which was a blade cut, best dish at our table. Husband ordered the sirloin medium well, it came out medium rare. We both kept picking at our daughter’s steak which was the best balance of flavor and seasonings.
Staff both times has been exceptional, I’ll give them that. Nice by-​the-​glass wine list, too. If I came in for wine and appetizers on the patio only, I think I would love this place a lot more. No other spot in Burnsville nails al fresco dining like Porter Creek.

We go there quite often!! Its an nice place especially when u can sit outdoors. last night we sat at the bar. the entrance is always congested they can’t keep up with the traffic they need to get more organized.
The food part last night had lamb sausage pizza absolutely delish must try!

Good food and service. Prices are good, quality is great. Definitely go back.

This was a really nice surprise. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but was able to be seated relatively quickly even on a Saturday night. Dinner was a round of appetizers but the other items on the menu looked really good. The prices were fair and the quality exceeded what I expected. Diverse wine list and full bar was nice. Service was respectably fast, given how busy it was. Great value and service and the food was uniformly good. While not cheap, worth the little bit extra you might spend. Will definitely be coming back!

Had good apricot glazed ribs. The ace pear cider on tap is a favorite of mine. Overall the meal was good and all of our party enjoyed their dinners.
Chris our server was amazing. Had a great sense of humor and made the experience that much better

I’ve eaten here twice. The first time was at the restaurant for a private party less than a year ago. The food was absolutely amazing! The atmosphere was terrific! The service was great.
A couple of days ago we ordered take out. The food was decent but not exceptional, as we remembered. The dine-​in experience was much better.

Gotta have Ariel as server. Professional and knows her menu!
Bruschetta on crispy tortilla triangles?! The topping was awesome with capers but rather have it on bread.
Croutons on salad are unique and awesome. Dressing needed some flavor.
Great filet with blue cheese crust

Love this place! Always friendly, quality is outstanding, and the prices make it the best bargain in the south metro area! We have been their guest multiple time and never been disappointed. Tuesday’s is the half price bottle of wine day, who does that? Thank you Porter Creek!

I’ll preface this by saying I was part of a large group (nine), so I’ll cut our server some slack. And actually, considering the fact that most of my family is hard of hearing, and my grandpa was being uncharacteristically douchey about his drink orders, our waitress did an excellent job. Service was prompt, friendly, and knowledgable.
The food was a little disappointing. I ordered the apricot and chipotle braised pork ribs. Presentation was great, and the sides were good (the apple and tortilla slaw was excellent — mashed potatoes pretty average), but the ribs were dry and overdone. The chipotle apricot glaze was very good, but there wasn’t enough of it. Most of my ribs tasted plain, and I left a fair amount uneaten.
The rest of my family had differing results: my mom ordered a very delicious scallops in siracha butter, and my uncle ordered salmon over roasted corn sauce, which he said had great flavor. My wife, however, had a rotisserie chicken with ribbons (pasta), and couldn’t even stomach it. Oily and bland, nearly inedible noodles.
The highlights for us were the chicken chowder and the drink selection. Great beers and good wines. Funny that a grill would have better seafood options than poultry, lamb and beef.
Everything was OK, hence the three-​star rating. Would go again just to see if things improve in a smaller group.

Love the ambiance and character or this restaurant! I had the Toasted Quinoa Chicken Salad and it was incredible! The combination of flavors was so good! I love curry so the curry vinaigrette was what made the salad over the top great!
We received friendly and fast service from our server as well. I can’t wait to come back in the summer and sit outside at the firepit! So cute.