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| - All in all, Beso did not hit the mark, I absolutely did NOT love it. Here are the reasons:
We decided to hold a company dinner at newly opened Beso tonight (15 people), as many may be aware, corporations usually limit meals by a per diem, as was the case for us. My admin made this clear to the staff when she made the reservation.
The first thing that rubbed me the wrong way was that the waiter was very intent on selling us the Imperial Shellfish Tower ($79), I personally told him no thank you, but he kept talking! I told him no thanks again and he said, ok, I'll check back later in case you change your mind (talk about pushy!). 15 minutes later, I totally saw the exact same waiter trying to upsell the Imperial Shellfish Tower to a different person in our party, that person said yes, and out comes 5 Imperial Shellfish Towers...Um, $400? THE most expensive appetizer on the menu! I clearly told him no...That was so not cool.
The 2nd thing - we had 2 vegetarians in our group, so we asked the waiter to provide a vegetarian meal to accommodate those in our party with special needs. The waiter returned and said, don't worry, we'll bring 2 veggie specials, the chef is fantastic and will create something delicious, you will not be disappointed. The whole table gets their food, except 1 of the vegetarians. After waiting a while, they bring out a large platter with roasted carrots, asparagus, pita bread, battered and deep fried green beans, mixed green salad, and some sliced cucumbers and apples. First of all, the dish was a weird mix of mismatched vegetables, secondly, everything but the green beans and the pita were served cold!!!! Not lukewarm or room temperature, just straight cold. I mean, it seemed like the guy slapped together whatever non-meat leftovers he had in the kitchen and sent it out to us. It was truly a huge and horrible meal.
Lastly, they kept serving bottled Voss water all night, which ended up being $10 a bottle...I don't recall being asked if I would prefer bottled vs. filtered/tap water.
The whole night, the staff seem very intent on providing a "great experience", so they were overly attentive, annoyingly so. They kept mentioning to us over and over..."We really want you to have a great experience..." I've honestly never been to an upscale restaurant that is so obvious and pushy about upselling the most expensive items on the menu, it's just straight up tacky. Of course we blew through the per diem, not that the staff at Beso even cared.
In the end, the total bill was over $1600, so I guess great experience = let's try to squeeze as much dough out of this group as possible. If the food was to die for, I wouldn't feel as offended, but it ranged from mediocre to downright horrible. I will probably avoid this place in the future, it's very disappointing to look forward to having dinner at a high end restaurant, pay the high end price, but get short changed on the food and the jacked service. Especially in this economic climate.
If I was ELP, I'd be pissed that these folks are representing me in such a classless and money grubbing manner. Yuck!
P.S. In regard to the location - Crystals City Center is basically a high end mall (Louis Vuitton, Van Cleef and Arpels, Tiffany, Prada, Miu Miu, etc), some stores were already open...Bring your big $$$$$! You can get some fancy stuff.
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