HIT OR MISS
The fiance and I decided to get food from Primal Cuts for our anniversary dinner and was rather looking forward to it. I initially read through some of the negative reviews, but decided to give this place the benefit of the doubt because I thought the low star reviewers just exaggerating.
Haha, this was one of those instances where I feel like I should have listened to those reviews and saved my time and money.
THE FOOD
One order of ribeye, one order of picanha. We went right around dinner time around 7 ish and they'd run out of mashed potatoes and mushrooms. But unfortunately that left ONE other complimentary side, the heirloom carrots, but she also mentioned we can add fries as a side, so that's what we did.
For Sunday dinner, the rush wasn't so bad so we got our food in a reasonable amount of time. So we take it home and dig in.
- The carrots were good. Nothing spectacular, but a solid side
- The fries were stale and old. We took a couple bites of these and couldn't finish the rest.
- The picanha. Haha oh my. oh. my. Never. in. my. life. In my ENTIRE life, have I EVER tasted meat this mediocre. WOW. I thought the other reviews talking about how chewy the meat is were just being needlessly picky. Boy, was I wrong. I could not chew through half the meat.
The rest, I had to tackle with my hands and tear of tiny bits with my teeth to be able to consume the food without wasting it. It wasn't because the meat was so overcooked, the meat got tough. It was the tendons or something--just terribly inedible. Maybe I just got a bad piece, but nothing about it was remotely enjoyable from the toughness of the meat to the metallic aftertaste of iron. I don't know why this was so chewy, but it seems it's not uncommon based on some of the other reviews from here. And I'm pretty sure they forgot the truffle butter on my steak that we paid for. for $16 + tax + tip, this was not worth the disappointment.
- The ribeye. Ok so this was probably the ONLY saving grace from this entire experience. The meat was juicy, flavorful, cooked to medium rare as requested.
THE CUSTOMER SERVICE
Alright, let's talk about the customer service here, or lack thereof. The girl at the register was nice enough. She wasn't overtly friendly or anything, but she had a bit of an attitude. Maybe she was just tired from the day or something, fed up with some other customers maybe, so she wanted to share that sentiment and make sure everybody else she met felt less than optimal for the rest of the night as well.
The way she answered our questions were just kinda apathetic? Another review mentioned the service was flat and like that of McDonalds, and that statement kinda wraps it up for me. Nothing personal against the cashier, but it's something management might consider paying attention to because the register is the face of the business. You want to make sure whoever is at the front is making a positive impression.
FINAL THOUGHTS
I really wanted to like this place a lot, I really did. But it's just not somewhere I'd return to or recommend. Potential? Primal Cuts has so much of it. SO much potential, but they can't be doing the same thing they are doing now if they want to stay in business and bring in more customers. The problem is inconsistency. The meat can't sometimes be good or sometimes bad. You can't sometimes have mashed potatoes and not prepare enough to run out when it's not even the dinner rush. Yeah I know it's not a multi-billion dollar franchise that's able to push out the same, expected taste every single time. But honestly, they need to re-evaluate where they are sourcing their meat because that lack of oversight in ingredient quality and supply seems to be the biggest weakness.
If it's a fast food, some stale fries are forgiveable. Some flat customer service, is unfortunately completely excusable. But ultimately as a "finer" dining spot, I expect a little more.
Bravo if you've read this far. If you're still on the fence about trying this place out, good luck. I won't be recommending this to my friends because there are plenty of other steakhouses that can provide much better service and food quality for the price.
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