Pearl 703

I would give no stars if possible.
My husband and I tried to dine here a while ago, however due to his back, we could not stay. They have outdoor metal patio chairs and one row of wood casework seating with throw pillows on them. No way a disabled person with severe back issues can dine here.

Lovely little place if your looking for a relaxed atmosphere that acknowledges the farm to table sustainability. Great staff and delicious food.

From the minute I placed a reservation to the last steps we took departing, everything was superb! Honestly never thought I would favor this place over the many fabulous restaurants in Norfolk, but I was sold on their Farm to Table concept. Granted it’s not completely so, as disclaimed by our server, but they do attempt to have a majority of their ingredients derive from local farmers in our area.
The restaurant is located at the front of a business mall area, surrounded by small offices. There’s a clear orange sign on Thimble Shoals that states PEARL 703 so you can’t miss it! Ample parking up front when we went and I’m certain the lot never gets too packed. From outside, it looks like an office space, but the twisted lights on the branches of the tiny trees up front gave a subtle ambiance upon approaching.
Walking in, we were greeted promptly with smiling faces and then sat at our reserved seating. Then moments later, we had two servers introduce themselves, but I’m terrible with remembering names. We opted to go a little classier than regular tap water and got a big bottle of San Pellegrino which was placed in a chiller at the center of the room after our glasses were filled on the first round. They refilled our glasses as soon as there was a noticeable change in the amount left. I honestly didn’t even noticed them do it, because they functioned so swiftly and smoothly.
We decided to skip the appetizer and got our meals right away. My gf had the crab cakes and I had the scallops with kale and passion fruit. Don’t quite remember what came with the crab cakes, but I do remember tasting the cakes themselves and it was moist and fresh. The scallops were lightly pan seared and placed on grilled kale and sautéed fruits. Let me tell you, they do NOT hold back on the quantity of scallops. I’ve gotten so used to classier restaurants to be on the stingy side of things, giving only 4 large scallops per plate. Pearl on the other hand, understands my heffer genes and the need for more. There was close to 8 – 10 slightly larger than medium sized scallops on the long plate. Everything tasted so fantastic! It was such a great balance between each of the components. The sweetness, the tartness, and the softness were just all made perfectly!
After that scrumptious entrée, I had the chocolate mousse with my coffee. It had dark cherries mixed in with the pile of chocolate everything. It was the perfect cap to the most amazing meal I’ve had in a while.
Overall, everything was just phenomenal. I had such a great experience that I will definitely be back again to try their rotating menu (It changes with what is in season).
Quick tip, if you check in to this location, make sure you let the servers know that you would like to use your 10% off. You can also get an extra 5% on top of that by simply liking their page on FB. Super easy.

The food was amazing. They had organic ingredients and hand made pastries. Excellent service. We will be back!

The food was very very good. The service was very nice. Oddly, the place did not smell nice.

This is one of the very few restaurants in Newport News that I would like to try after reading the previous reviews. Food is quite good. Price? I don’t look at the price when the whole experience goes well. Pics attached.
Ps– some of the waitresses looked unfriendly, I was lucky that the most friendly/​the most «being taken advantage» waitress came to serve my table! Thx god!

I loved it! I had the filet and it was delicious! The potatoes were well cooked and seasoned perfectly. My husband had Rabbit curry and he enjoyed it. We both agree that it was some of the best food we’ve had. As an appetizer we had alligator pot stickers and they were also good. They had a sweet taste to them. The prices are a little high but considering everything is fresh and local I believe it’s worth it. The staff are very personable and do their job well. It’s an awesome place to have a special dinner with a loved one!

The meal (which included an appetizer, entrée and dessert) was mediocre and, as another reviewer wrote, underwhelming. The service was above average and our waitress, Regina, was very pleasant.

I came here for the first time during 2016 restaurant week for dinner and was definitely impressed.
For $ 30 I had the following:
*Squash and Baked Cheese– This was not at all what I expecting (my fault for not reading the full description) but it was delish! Squash was mixed with a fig chutney and cheese and served in a puff pastry. The combo of savory, salty and sweet flavors finished off nicely with the chewiness of the shell.
*Five-​Spice Filet Mignon– Finally a steak cooked how I asked, medium rare. This was the perfect serving of beef and it was so tender and buttery. It was served with an interesting potato gratin dish and more squash. Both nice complements to the beef. This by itself would have been worth $ 30 for a special meal. Top quality stuff.
*Lemon Posset– I love lemon flavored things, which is why I ordered it. This was light and refreshing, about half lemon crème/​half whipped cream and finished off with blackberries.
I later read that the owner, Dave Coleman, grows most of his vegetables and raises pigs on his small farm in Toano. This is truly farm to fork and probably explains why squash was abundant on the menu in January.
The atmosphere felt clean and chic. Great date spot and a nice addition to the Peninsula culinary scene.

I had the pleasure of experiencing this place with Rich a few days for Newport News restaurant week. Their prix fixe menu had a choice of an appetizer, entrée, and dessert for only $ 30, which was not bad at all.
The staff here is very friendly and accommodating. The hostess, our server Tracy, and everyone in between were a delight and pretty fun to joke around with; however, the food is the most important part of any restaurant and for me this place was just ok.
For an appetizer I had their french onion soup which was pretty tasty. My entrée was the five spice filet mignon done medium well. It was alright, nothing special, but I will say that the gratin potato pastry that the filet came on top of was the best part of my meal. It was a mixture of regular and sweet potato, and it gave the meat a lot more flavor when I scooped up both in the same bite. For dessert I got the French toast bread pudding. I believe that the outside was sweetened, but the inside wasn’t. This made each bite of the pudding for me hit or miss, depending on which part I was eating. Personally I like my bread pudding to be super sweet; but that’s a preference so I can’t hold it against the restaurant.
Overall, pearl provides friendly service, and charming concepts with their food. My one and only criticism would be about the lack of seasoning in their food.

«Meh. I’ve experienced better.»…
I really really wanted to like Pearl. I came here 6 – 7 months ago randomly and thought I enjoyed my meal but couldn’t remember. I came back last week and I was very underwhelmed.
The seafood crepes let me down. I don’t say this often because I’m not picky, but all the different flavors didn’t vibe well in my mouth. The sausage didn’t seem like anything special and the sweet potato fries didn’t mesh with with the crepes. I wish they had a different pairing with the crepes.
The Miniature Rabbit Pot Pie was AMAZING though! They rarely have it on the menu (since they’re menu regularly changes), but they need to make it a stable bc I wanted a whole bucket of those large shot-​glass sized pies! :)
The ambiance was more casual than I remember, despite them trying to make it classier.

This place is great. They’re really running with the farm to table idea with local sourcing of everything they can get. I had a really nice dinner here, the service was great, and the food was delicious. But when I’m paying $ 50+ a head, I pull out the nitpicker. In general, I felt some of the offerings needed balance. They had a menu for restaurant week, but we ordered off the regular menu. They also do lunch.
To start, the French onion soup was great. They use fontina cheese, which is a bit creamier than the usual. The alligator and andouille potstickers were literally (okay, figuratively) exploding with flavor — and an order gets you a generous 6 of them.
I had two cocktails, one with berry vodka, blue curacao, and fruit juice, which was too sweet; the other had gin, absinthe, OJ, and grenadine and was too herbal.
I got the scallops, which were really tasty on a creamy risotto. They came next to a warm salad of kelp and eggplant etc with a potent dressing, which was tasty, but had so much flavor that it felt too loud next to the delicate scallops and drowned them out. My fiancé got a rabbit curry, which I tasted and was just amazing. I was a bit jealous. We did get an unwelcome visit from a pesky fruit fly, which is concerning in mid-​winter.
– In summary, the food and drink had bold flavor but in some cases lacked balance. The service was excellent, minus the fly. I had a better dinner here than I could get in 97% of restaurants in NN, but they are definitely on the expensive side.

My boyfriend and I ate here on a Saturday night and we LOVED it. The food was outstanding. We had the rabbit curry and the duck confit, and they were both delicious (probably the best curry I’ve ever had. And the chef upped the heat upon request.) To start, we had the Cajun potstickers, which had, by far, the best filling I’ve ever had in a potsticker (andouille sausage and alligator). The service was incredible. Our server, Zee, knew the menu backward and forward. He made great recommendations and suggested wine pairings with our meal. You should ask for him when you come!
The best part of Pearl 703 is that you have all the good parts of fine dining (like the A+ food and service) without the stuffiness or pretentiousness of many fancy restaurants. This place is adorable and warm, where you can dress up or not and still feel welcome. A perfect date night spot. And I hear they have a great happy hour too. Highly recommend!

So, my husband & good friend had planned a surprise birthday dinner for me at the restaurant.
Obviously I didn’t listen in during the conversation when my husband booked the table, but if he had mentioned it’s a SURPRISE birthday dinner as he told me he had, the first thing that went wrong that night, was when the server asked me if I was the birthday girl& if we were here to celebrate my birthday.
Everything seemed fine as we went along. We weren’t too hungry so we ordered 2 starters & 2 main courses for 3 to share.
The French onion soup was delicious, worthy of any of the best French restaurants we’d been to around the world. The shrimp & grits were fabulous too & the scallops were wonderfully cooked. I loved the pairing with the eggplant-​delicious.
However, the turning point came when my friend spotted a piece of metal bristle than looked like part of a metal scrubbing sponge. After the server took the plate, the chef immediately came to the dining room & apologized for the incident, & also promised that they would not charge us for it. The way this was handled was very professional and you could tell she was sincere.
What made an otherwise unpleasant dining experience very palatable was that when we received the bill, not only were the scallops not billed, what we ordered subsequently — the dessert & 3 coffees were also on the house. I also had a complimentary birthday dessert.
The food was very good, reason for us to want to return. But what made that night for us was the chef & her professionalism.
She turned the dining experience (due to the surprise being spoilt, and the bristle) from a lackluster one to a stellar one!

I came here for lunch with my boyfriend recently. Our server was fantastic and explained their concept (farm to table) and menu to us clearly and quickly. Overall, we received just phenomenal service.
It’s important to note that this restaurant has vegetarian AND vegan options… and they’re not limited to the salad section.
We ordered two different half salads (on our server’s recommendation to downsize due to the amount of food in our entrees). My boyfriend had a quinoa salad that he enjoyed immensely, I ordered a beet salad. Our entrees were the pork belly rice bowl and the vegetarian crêpe of the day. Both were incredibly tasting and filling. I’m so glad our server advised us to order half salads so we had room for all the food! We ordered an AMAZING lemon dessert. It was like eating fresh lemon curd. I would go back just for that.
I felt the total was very reasonable considering the high quality ingredients and excellent preparation. I can’t wait to stop in again on my next visit to Newport News.

Well it was an interesting experience to say the least. The featured soup was potato leek which turned out to be a cup of solid mashed potatoes. Interesting haha. The scallops she said were good. The pot stickers seemed to disappear ok. The filets came out somewhat the right temp. The veggies of the day were stone cold and the featured purple potato coins were basically charred chips and stone cold as well. We are going to have dessert and them laugh all the way home never to return. Oh and could someone please asks the server to stop saying ABSOLUTELY. She used it in appropriated at least 50 time. Lmao. Oh well. Live and learn.

Words doesn’t do this place justice. The owner is hospitably and extremely friendly. He came out and shook all of our hands and had small talk with everyone in the establishment. Also the food is superb!!! The potstickers are a must. I hope more people check this place out because you have big city eatery in a small town.

Sorry, Hampton Roads, but Pearl BIstro isn’t quite fine dining. The food is about a four star — good, but not outstanding — but the décor is a three and the prices are about two times as much as what’s called for by the experience. If the prices had aligned with the true value of the place, I would’ve bumped it up.
My wife and I shared a seafood dish with cream sauce. I thought the best part of it was the scallops that were on top of the tilapia. We also had a steak filet, which was ordered medium rare but which arrived somewhere between medium and medium well. There was a tiny amount of bread, enough for each of us to have two minuscule slices.
My wife had a bit of riesling, and we declined dessert. All told, that cost us $ 100+ including tip. We agreed that it was a $ 60 meal at best.

The Chicken Bienville was amazing. It’s not easy to prepare each of the components in a dish such as this so they are cooked properly but they were perfect.
Strong, reasonably priced wine selection along with a full bar.
Don’t ask questions, just order the limoncello cake for desert. The cake was warm while the filling was still cool. Another instance of serving everything at the proper temperature and paying attention to the details.

My family and I came here for brunch this past Mother’s Day. In short, our experience was excellent. Even though our party was large and included some young children, we were easily accommodated and well-​attended to. The food was delicious, the menu a balanced mix of classic French, Cajun, and new American dishes.
Though I’m originally from VA, I live in The Bay Area now and feel pretty spoiled with the amount of excellent restaurants near me. It’s always great when I come back home to the 757 and discover a gem like this one.