Emily S.
Yelp
Fine dining is slim pickins in Sedona, so maybe I needed to lower my expectations, but I felt that the overall experience and execution were really amateurish for this price point. Had it been more of a casual, family restaurant with prices about a third below what they were charging, it would have been a four or five star meal, but the ambiance, service and food were way too basic for dinner entrees at well over $30 a plate.
It also doesn't offer any kind of view that many other Sedona restaurants at a similar price point use to justify their pricing.
First, the service. Making reservations here is involved, as they don't use any of the modern services (like Rezy or OpenTable) that are available and instead require you to fill out a webform and wait for them to e-mail back with a confirmation. They did get back to me promptly the next day, but we had to go back and forth with a few things and... just not as seamless as it could have been.
Then, when we sat down to dinner we asked the server to recommend a local Arizona wine, since we'd heard wine country was legit in this area. He had no idea and had to leave to ask a bartender. He came back and said they only had one, and that it was 60% syrah. I'm not a huge fan of syrah so I asked what it was blended with and he didn't know and would have to go ask a bartender again. I said not to bother and ordered a California zinfandel. My boyfriend ordered a merlot right off the menu. The server leaves, our wine is delivered, and then a totally new server comes over and introduces herself and says she'll be taking care of us.
We were confused, and explained we already had a server. She said that our original server had asked her to take over our table because she knew more about wine than he did. But we already had our wine. To be fair, our new server was friendly and knowledgeable, but this was bizarre. I have eaten dinner out several times a week for most of my adult life and have never had a server switch on us unless there was a shift change. In this case it was because we were apparently too high maintenance or something? It made us feel like we had done something wrong. We continued to watch our original server help other tables around us and it was awkward.
Effort was clearly put into decor and ambiance, but it seemed dated and would really would have benefited from an update sometime in the past decade. There were some nice things, but they seemed mismatched and didn't form a cohesive vision, and there were a few things that were a bit tacky and took away from the vibe. I thought the carved faces on the wood beams were a really nice touch, but they got lost in the mishmosh. Again, fine for a middle-of-the-road family restaurant, but not at this price point and at a location advertising itself as a real steak house.
And then there was the food, which was simply NOT up to par for this price. The boyfriend and I both ordered the blackened halibut "pizzaz", which came with a soup or salad and one side and was topped with pineapple salsa, and was over $30/plate. The seasoning on the halibut and the pineapple salsa were both excellent, though the fish itself was a little well done for my taste. The fish was the only good thing on the plate.
The salad was paltry and the dressing was served on the side in a plastic cup. On the side is fine, but a plastic cup? Really?
I got a side of asparagus and the boyfriend got potatoes au gratin and then we shared them. The asparagus was plain and undercooked and we both felt weird the next day.
The potatoes au gratin were boring and tasted like they could have been made at home using the Betty Crocker cookbook. They were clearly made in a baking dish with cheddar on top and cut out in squares. At this price they should have been creamy, using a combination of fine cheeses (like gruyere) and presented much more beautifully. Again, if this had been a $24 dish instead of a $34 dish, I would have been impressed. But not for what we paid and the expectations we had when we arrived.
All in all, I was pretty disappointed. I booked this restaurant in advance for our last night in Sedona, a trip that I gifted to my boyfriend for his 40th birthday, and was hoping to make it a really special evening, which is why I booked a place with 4 stars on Yelp and a high-end price point. If I had known how basic and middle-of-the-road it was, I may have still come here (though maybe not for these prices), but not for an evening that I was hoping to make really special. Luckily, it wasn't the last night of our trip, just our last night in Sedona, and the following evening we had a high-end dinner in Scottsdale at La Hacienda, which had a similar price point and completely blew our dinner at Golden Goose away.