Yelp reviewers rarely steer me wrong. But this visit left me regretting our choice to give it a shot. Frankly it was hard to find anything redeeming to say. We walked in and stood waiting to be seated as per the sign. But we were met with unwelcoming expressions. We asked about "up there" pointing to tables and booths on an upper level. We were, with a seemingly ambivalent tone, told to sit wherever. It was hard to tell if booths on top were available due to the high dividers, but as we traversed the top level and had almost given up to sit down in the bar, we found a booth at the end that the server was using to hang out. She begrudging cleared it for us. This didn't set the stage for a positive experience, but we shook it off and tried to cheerfully engage with our server.
After passing by us a couple of times, server asked what we wanted to drink. It was 5:00, right after work. We had menus but not drink menus. I asked for a beer list. There wasn't one. My dining companion asked the name of the house red. Server didn't know. okay, just the varietal then. Stare. Stare. We asked her to find out. OMG, the bar was literally one step, 3 stairs, and another step away. She left without saying a word to check.
All that notwithstanding, the menu included a rib eye steak. So certainly the food was decent, we thought. My friend wanted the bacon-wrapped ribeye but had trouble finding two sides. The dinner came with a green salad. But I could understand why she had a tough decision. Choices were either fried or garlic mashed potatoes, or vegetable: carrots. Starch, starch, or starch. In an effort to make the server's life easier (was she having a bad day?) I asked that my dining companion's order be duplicated, for me. We ordered the carrots and the garlic mash. The salad came and was by definition, a green salad, but barely passable iceberg.
The steak came and was done medium-well though I'd asked for medium rare. The carrot were suspiciously uniform in color and taste-bland. They were reheated frozen vegetables. But worse yet was that the mashed potatoes were instant and not even a decent instant. They were unfit for human consumption. Neither of us ate them. And because there wasn't enough starch, it came with toast. I'm guessing to take up space on the plate as if to make it more aesthetically pleasing. Bahaha!
We'd had to ask for water early on and they weren't refilled. We weren't asked about a second drink ever.
This is a place that needs to stick to their core competency, though I'm not sure what that would be. read more