Jack B.
Yelp
We were very excited to eat here especially given the reviews, interiors, cocktail list, and dinner menu. The reception staff was attentive and welcoming and we loved the the warm feel of the restaurant. The manager came by twice and was very charming and asked how our evening was going, which is a very nice touch.
Renata's staff were pleasant and certainly seemed to be doing their best to be attentive to our needs. All of the appetizers and entres were cooked extraordinarily well also.
So why and how could I be leaving a 2 star review, right? Here's the thing, at a restaurant like this, you need to be hitting on all cylinders if you're going to charge $22 - $30 for a cocktail and $95 for a 12 oz NY Steak without sides.
Here is a list of what was just "off":
1a. Asked for a Pappy Van Winkle Manhattan for my wife on her birthday. They thought they had it but didn't and brought her a Bulleit Rye Manhattan without coming back with what options they had.
1b. I had 3 speicalty cocktails, the Barreled Aged Oaxacan Old Fashioned , Against the Grain, and the El Matador. All of the cocktails have amazing ingredients and sound extremely interesting. Unfortunately, each one I tried was nothing exceptional. All of the amazing ingredients simply cancelled eachother out and delivered muted / bland unextradorinary cocktails, especially for the price. For example, I expected to taste a tequila style Old Fashioned in the Oaxacan Old Fashion given the high end tequila used but it tasted like a Jim Beam Old Fashioned, what's the point, right? The Against the Grain was odd, it reminded me of a bad attempt at a Mai Tai. The El Matador was equally as confusing, no drive but a weird underwhelming flavor with a hint of heat.
2. Appetizers - Again, cooked terrifically but none of them other than the Mexican Ceasar salad was worth eating, they were all bland and uninteresting, which is not what I expect from Latin inspired cuisine. I will say that the Ceasar Salad was by far the absolute best I've ever had and the best thing the restaurant serves!
3. My wife ordered the Sea Bass which was perfectly cooked. Unfortunately the fish was not fresh, it had a "fish" like flavor to it which means it had been sitting around or not kept correctly. What a shame to cook a passed fish with such excellence but a complete miss. Any fresh fish should never be "fishy," especially a Seabass.
4. When they delivered the food, the waiter should come over immediately to check in on us. We hadn't seen our waitress in 15 minutes, my drink was dry and was hoping to order that third cocktail mentioned above. I asked for staff to bring over our waiter so I could order a drink and she brought me the drink I had previously had, total miscommunication, which can happen.
5. When our food arrived, none of the staff nor the waitress cared to ensure we had proper utensils to eat our entres. My son could not eat his NY Steak without a steak knife and I didn't have fork to eat mine.
Overall, if I spend $500 on three people, I expect the experience to be amazing. I think Phoenix isn't use to what good food really is unfortunately. Renata's Hearth is likely a welcome restaurant in an area mainly served by chains until the last decade but it is far from worthy given the flavors, price point, and lack of attention to detail by staff that need to be much sharper and on top of it.