Amical

Went here for valentines dinner. Had olive twist for appetizer which was fabulous. I had vegetarian risotto — which tasted exactly like what I make at home… Not sure if that’s a good thing for me for a bad thing for the restaurant. Husband had steak which he said was ok — he’s had better. Over all, the service was great. They were out of chocolate moose cake so we ended up having German chocolate which was tasty as well.

Great food, great atmosphere. Friendly service. Ordered the French toast, banana Nutella crêpe, and California omelet. Everything came out perfect and tasted amazing.

Love this place. The food is always good. We’ve been going here for years. Love the location. Service is good. Nice wines on the menu. A little piece of France right here in Traverse City!

Best food and service. Nice interior with optional outdoor seating. Salmon and salad and tomato soup are tasty. We eat here at least 10 – 15 times a year — Winter/​Spring/​Summer/​Fall. Entrees and salads are great. Chef accommodates changes. Always friendly.

One of our favorites spots when we get back to Traverse City. Wonderful bacon & spinach omelette with a tasty cinnamon roll. Not to mention they have the best cup of coffee.

I had the half chicken dinner and it came with two tablespoons of tasteless potatoes and six green beans. I’m not a good cook but I could of made a better dinner. My girlfriend had the Pork chop which was so tough it could of been used as a hammer. We spent $ 56 just on the entrees and left there still hungry and very PO’d.

Best restaurant in TVC.
It’s been 10 years since my last review of Amical, so I thought it was time for an update. Happily, Amical has only gotten better over the years. The ambiance is friendly and welcoming for a high-​end restaurant. The space is long and relatively narrow but is used well, with a partially visible kitchen immediately behind the hostess stand. A small bar is just beyond the entryway and offers minimal seating for waiting for a table or having happy hour. While there are no bad seats in the restaurant, our favorites are outside during suitable weather, and near the fireplace in back when it gets cold.
The menu is a lovely mix of old favorites and new dishes in weekly rotation. If you like great-​lakes fish you’re in luck: it’s super-​fresh and each catch is offered in a variety of preparations (grilled, crusted, blackened, etc). There are always at least a couple of entrees suitable for vegetarians: we had yummy risotto on our most recent visit. The soups are hot and hearty, especially in the winter. The tomato soup in a bread bowl is a meal in itself. There are usually three-​four salads, but our favorite is the Amical salad, a standard of the menu almost since opening. Of the many appetizers, our favorite is the olive twists, a unique item of home-​made pastry and black olives. The bar is well stocked for a small-​ish space: they had a nice rye for my old-​fashioned. The wine list is not large, but is well-​chosen, and they have a very nice selection of wine by the glass.
The service is exemplary, and on a par with the menu and ambiance. In countless visits I’ve never had bad service. Not once. Service this consistent usually means that the management spends time and attention on staff training. The wait staff always seem to find the happy medium between friendly and efficient. They’re around when I need them, and disappear when I don’t.
I wish I could find a downside to make my review sound «balanced» so maybe I’ll have to say that Amical is quite busy on summer nights and reservations are a must. Also, because TVC is a tourist destination you sometimes encounter slobs in jeans and T-​shirts and flip-​flops. But don’t let that put you off: the service and the food will satisfy every time.

I’m giving this a 2 for the friendly bartender who recommended the pork chop. Talk about something that sounded great but tasted like biting through a wet towel. Tough and over cooked is how they apparently think pork should be served. Maybe I was just unlucky but I don’t think I have ever regretted paying $ 36 plus tip for food more than I did for this meal. Maybe I should have ordered a drink to dull my senses.

Very impressed! A quaint little restaurant that feels like you are smack dab in a Paris café. An essentially open kitchen with excellent meals, but far from being inexpensive. We decided to try a little bit of everything.
Starting with the Beet Salad– highly recommend!
Then had the white fish pâté which was extremely delicious. Much of what you would expect from a whitefish pâté.
The olive twists were piping hot out of the oven with a buttered flavor and multiple olives baked into the bread. This was my least favorite item, but I have heard it is many people’s favorite.
The ahi tuna was excellent. A thin slice of ahi tuna on a cracker with a balsamic glaze. The cracker was not too overpowering and you could will get that great raw tuna flavor.
The final item was the crab cakes– these were phenomenal and by far my favorite item. Absolutely delicious and very delicate. You receive two cakes that when paired with a salad would be enough for a meal.
The wine list has a few Michigan (TC area) wines and I enjoy a Good Harbor Winery Pinot Grigio which paired very nicely with the meal.
Will definitely go back, but for the price it is definitely not an every day

Our group of four went to Amical with a reservation on a Saturday night. They were fairly busy and some of the tables were a bit packed in. The restaurant has French country décor that is upscale without being pretentious. Our server greeted us immediately and took drink orders. After, she brought mixed marinated olives, warm bread and whipped butter. Great start to the meal. The menu has several appetizers that sounded intriguing and we ended up sharing the crab guacamole. While not French, it was very good.
We had a difficult time deciding what to order. Besides the regular menu items they had several specials. I ended up ordering one of these, the trout with fingerling potatoes and grilled zucchini. It also had a peach and blueberry salsa which was the only part of the meal that I did not like. The fish already had a sauce and I thought the tart salsa was too much. The other meals ordered at our table were the french onion soup, Caprese salad, the scallops and the curried vegetable risotto. The french onion soup was very good and covered in cheese (possibly a bit too much). The basil on the Caprese salad was stronger than usual. I also really liked the scallops, there was a good sear on the scallops. We were too full to order any of the desserts, but they looked and sounded very good.
Amical also has a good wine menu that includes local, Michigan wines.

While i certainly miss being able to smoke on their patio while enjoying a French 75, or two, or ten…
it hasn’t stopped me from coming back every time I am back home.
I’ve never had a bad experience here. Their food is always spot on.
The specials are always delicious, and the reoccurring items on the menu are 100% consistent. Absolutely love any fish dish they have, the amical salad is a perfect starter, as well as the olive twists.
Their brunch is amazing also — and theres never a terrible wait, except on busy weekends in TC — in which case, i would make a reservation.
Although if you catch yourself waiting for a table, it gives you plenty of time to drool over the dessert case (save room for dessert) or grab a cocktail at the cute up front bar.

We went to the restaurant on the recommendation of a local who dines their when her parents visit. It’s a favorite of theirs and they travel to France regularly. We figured that’s a pretty credible testimony for a French restaurant.
We came with kids and took a walk down the street while our table was prepped, we came back 10 minutes later and walked right to our table. Dinner began with warm bread which was delicious, and a glass of wine, also delicious. I am never one to order lamb but asked the waiter about it; he said its one of their specialties so I went out on a limb. I was not at all disappointed and finished every bit of my meal. All that was left on the plate was a very clean bone. The lamb was tender and well seasoned and the potatoes were a great accompaniment. My daughter got the tomato soup which is topped with a puff pastry and served very hot, fresh and very satisfying.
We took home a piece of peanut butter pie to share though it was not an easy decision when looking at the display of desserts. Many tasty options to choose from!

Friends recommended this restaurant to us and we were not disappointed. As suggested, we made reservations and had no wait whatsoever. Our server, Andrew, was exceptional. He was friendly, helpful with suggestions when asked, accommodating, timely in bringing dishes and removing them and very knowledgeable without being pretentious. Before our meals arrived, they brought fresh hot bread and whipped butter which was tasty. Hubby started out with Onion Soup and was a big fan, while I started with a Seafood Guacamole made with lump crab and lobster with the most beautiful color of chips! Our entrees were Lamb Shank, cooked perfectly, and a seafood special — delicious! At the the end, we were going to split a dessert, but they all looked so amazing that we both ordered a different one. My Coconut Cloud had a little too much cloud and not enough coconut for my taste, yet hubby truly enjoyed his Chocolate Raspberry Tart. That’s always a winning combination. There is also an option of eating al fresco in front. It might sound strange, but we actually thought they forgot to charge us something because the bill was a little less than expected! How often does that ever happen. We would definitely go there again!

Incredibly disappointed by tonight’s meal. My brother and sister-​in-​law swear by this place but I wouldn’t go back for dinner if someone paid for my meal. Ordered the walleye special, as did my brother, and when it came out, we both dug in and were immediately sticking out our tongues, surprised how bland it was. No flavor whatsoever. Everyone else at the table was enjoying their dinners, and we just looked at each other like, ‘This sucks.’ Our waitress apologized and offered to bring something else, but I wasn’t going to take her up on it. As it turns out, we saw another walleye special and noticed there was a mushroom ragou cream sauce that never made it onto either my plate or my brother’s. We told this to the waitress, who acknowledged that someone in the kitchen must have screwed up because it was supposed to have a sauce.
I expected at this time for the manager to come out to address what occurred, and for both dinners to be comped. This didn’t happen. The waitress did give us 50% off, but that just means I paid $ 16 for an incomplete meal than the $ 32 it was listed at for market price.
The dessert ended up being good. but most places when they screw the pooch that badly will go out of their way to make it up to you. If the best you can offer me is 50% off your screwup, sorry, but that’s what Unilocal is made for.

The atmosphere is great. Romantic, cozy, we lived sitting on the patio.
It was pricey but we expected the food to be amazing. The drinks we good. We started with the French onion which I thought was great, my boyfriend hoped it would be more oniony.
Our entrees were pretty good. We were both hoping for better meat. We actually switched entrees.
Overall the experience was good, almost great but not amazing as we would have hoped.

I have been meaning to write this review since early June but life gets hectic, but the experience, food, service, and atmosphere were all so awesome that I didn’t want to forget this one!
I was with a co-​worker at Amical on a Thursday night from 6 – 11 pm. We sat outside on the patio to enjoy the perfect 75 degrees evening. The patio and tables were clean and there was plenty of space in between the other tables to get through or sit further away from the table.
Our server was Abigail and she greeted us immediately with a big bright smile and had a pleasant personality where she seemed to have everything timed perfectly and we never felt like she was bothering us. In fact, we were there for over 5 hours eating and drinking after we met some new friends at another table. She never once rushed us to cash out (thank you, Abigail!) I hope I get Abigail again when I go back to Amical soon.
I uploaded pictures of our meals and desserts and everything tasted so good! We couldn’t decide which dessert to order because they all looked DELICIOUS so the two of us ordered three desserts and shared with the girls at the next table over (and that’s how we met our new friends!)
After having a number of negative experiences recently with other restaurants, Amical made up for all of them.

Great establishment for an early Sunday brunch. We went here with a large group on an early, rainy Sunday morning. We were greeted as soon as we walked in and placed at a large table that was waiting for us. There wasn’t too many people there, only a few occupied tables and no line. We were greeted and offered with water and sweet breads while our drink orders were taken. The coffee was excellent and they were very willing to cater to special requests.
We all seemed to get something similar, but then different. Most of us enjoyed omelettes and everyone seemed to be a fan. I personally enjoyed the Mexican-​type omelette which had chorizo sausage inside and the entire omelette was wrapped in a tortilla with salsa and fresh avocado placed on top. Some friends enjoyed the bacon omelette which one had a small complain of a little TOO much bacon (is that possible?!). Another friend enjoyed the fruit crêpe which looked divine and came with a cream cheese-​raspberry-​type topping that also looked delicious. All meals came with some potatoes and fresh fruit, also no complaints there. The coffee was kept warm and the service was great, I would definitely go back again. Plus, the prices were wonderful considering Traverse City summer and downtown restaurants.

This was a sweet place and we had come here for lunch on Saturday night, made it just in time — before closing. Me and my friend shared the Jumbo crab cakes and the Chicken pot pie. Crab cakes were delicious, but pot pie was soo good. It is definitely good for sharing. My other friend ordered a risotto which was pretty good and we had one chocolate mousse cake which was super rich.
Place looked good and we sat outside so we had a good view of the streets as well. The service really was good and professional. I thought I was in a fine-​dining restaurant.

The food? Great. Dinner service? Fantastic. Customer service? Not so much.
My boyfriend and I dined here this past Saturday. Everything was going swimmingly until we asked for the check…
We requested to split the check between two cards… not exactly an uncommon request, right? The check was a reasonable $ 80, a fantastic value for a great meal. Well, we became concerned after it took the server ten minutes to process our check. She comes back and says my boyfriend’s card «hasn’t been declined, but it’s saying he needs to call his bank.» Come again?
We shrug our shoulders thinking it’s because he’s out of state and perhaps his bank thought it was a fraudulent charge. I request she charge my card for the entirety of the bill… but when we look at it, it’s gone from $ 80 to $ 100. At this point, she’s already charged my card for the original half of the meal and adds another bill on for his half. I reluctantly consent to another charge on my card.
Welp, unbeknownst to us, she had actually run both of our cards multiple times, locking him out of his bank account for the rest of the trip and leaving my card with a whopping $ 150 on what was supposed to be a $ 100 ($ 80?) total check.
We spoke with the manager and he explained that she forgot to put the half bottle of wine we ordered on there, added it on after swiping both of our cards, then realized she put the WRONG bottle of wine on there (a difference of $ 1.50), and charged our cards AGAIN after that. She made it sound like it was a problem with his bank… but neglected to tell us all of the mistakes she had made, which she thought could be corrected by running and canceling multiple charges (BRILLIANT.).
The way the manager handled it left quite a bit to be desired and coming from Chicago with world-​class restaurants, it was clear this was not one. He was essentially making us feel responsible for the erroneous and duplicitous practices of his server. Had she been honest with us and explained to us her errors, it would’ve been fine, but she played dumb and the only straight response we could get was from the manager.
Both of us have service backgrounds and if you make a mistake and aren’t sure what to do, you should consult your manager instead of getting swipe-​happy with the cards, especially over such a trivial amount as a $ 1.50 difference between bottles of wine.
Dining at Amical put a huge damper on our trip after subsequently locking him out of his bank account and the unapologetic nature of the staff only compounded the issue. It’s clear this business is a big fish in a small pond given the level of customer service we experienced. Multiple charges are still pending on both of our accounts. 0/​10, would not dine here again.

I love their olive twist appetizer! So simple, yet so good! My mom had the filet. It was $ 29.00, but she said it was cooked to perfection. It was her birthday, so the splurge was worth it. I wasn’t very hungry, so I had the thin crust mushroom — chevre pizza. it was good, but not memorable. Her friend had a really fresh salad with a large piece of salmon atop. She took half of it home.
Great ambiance; I wouldn’t call it romantic because it is kind of loud inside, especially with the table of ladies behind us. The tables are close together too. Our server was excellent; he knew the menu well.
I’d recommend this place, and I’d be content to come back for a more affordable lunch menu of wraps, pizzas, and quiches.