Karen C.
Yelp
I'm going to separate this into two reviews.
First. We are not from San Antonio. We were here to visit our son who was here in a training class for the military. It was 97° and humid. I made reservations several days ago, as it was Saturday during Father's Day weekend. Let me set the stage by saying my husband is a 20 year Marine and 10 year police officer. He doesn't go anywhere nice without being starched and creased. Same with my son. We were dressed very nice. My husband and adult son both had button-down dress shirts on, and slacks. I was in a work suit and heels. (To be transparent, the suit was long shorts and not pants, but it was Dolce and Gabbana.) The young hostess takes us all the way downstairs. Past the beautiful first and second floors with linen tablecloths and ambience. Down to the small, casual bar, and starts to take us outside. I comment that it's 97° and we would prefer not to sit outside. So she seats us in a very casual bar area. No tablecloths, something akin to outback steakhouse. I told her that we had a reservation for the steakhouse and that we would prefer to sit upstairs. Additionally, the bar area is wide open floor to ceiling. So the bar is also roughly 95° inside. She tells us that they have a dress code. So we ask what the dress code is because we are dressed very nicely. She looks at us for a minute like a deer in the headlights, and then says, no open toed shoes. I had on Jimmy Choo peep toe high heel shoes. It's not like I was wearing flip-flops. So we sit there in the bar, sweating, and wondering if we just get up and leave or what we should do. At this point, I am not happy, and I know that we're there to have a $400 meal to celebrate my amazing husband and father of my boys. This is not a great way to start. I'm certainly not going to do it sweating my butt off. Literally 10 minutes later, we flagged down our waitress who says, I didn't know you were eating here, most people sit in the bar just to have a drink. That was the last straw. So my husband asks to see the manager and asks him if there's any possibility that we can sit somewhere other than the 95° bar. He says absolutely, apologizes profusely for the hostess putting us down there, and takes us upstairs to the real restaurant.
Review part two: The manager takes us upstairs to a lovely restaurant. Vincenzo is our waiter, and he is absolutely fabulous. The service from start to finish was absolutely impeccable. We started with bang bang shrimp, a crab cake, and the bread service. The shrimp was spicy and crispy and delicious. The crabcake had chunks of lump crab and was super tasty. The pretzel rolls were warm and yummy, and came with two kinds of butter.
My husband got the bone in ribeye rare, I had the American Wagyu filet mignon rare, my son had the 10oz filet mignon medium rare. We also ordered au gratin potatoes, asparagus, and the salt service. All of our meat was perfectly cooked. The potatoes were rich and creamy and delicious. Asparagus was crispy and lovely. The salts were the perfect touch to take those steaks to the next level. We had some lovely red wine that accompanied our meal perfectly. And we finished with the crème brûlée and berries. Fortunately, we were able to recover from the unprofessional beginning to our experience, and have a lovely celebration. Dinner was $409 before tip and worth every penny.