| rev:text
| - This was probably one of the most disappointing fine dining experiences I've ever had in Las Vegas. In short, they are extremely stuck up and not very accommodating. Read on for the long version.
I've been to a lot of fine dining at the major hotel casinos in this town. One of the cornerstones of the fine dining experience, in my opinion, is that you do what you can to accommodate the customer. Well this is not the case at Gordon Ramsey Steak. At this place, the snobbish attitude is that you will take what's on the menu and you will like it.
It was a special occasion dinner, but we were never asked as such. But that's okay. We were sat in an area apart from the main dining room (so the view was not as good -- a bit more claustrophobic and it sort of felt like we were being segregated away from the "real" customers and put into the "cheap seats"). What we arrived about an hour past opening, so whatever. Waiter seemed to take forever to get around the steak presentation and ordering, but such a delay was the least of the problem (although in hindsight, it may have been a red flag).
Skip ahead to the food ordering where the night went downhill. Wife does not like fish, but was interested in a seafood dish on the menu that listed four seafood items, one of which was fish. We asked the waiter if it was possible to switch out the fish with shrimp. His immediate response was that that chef doesn't like to accommodate substitutes -- and making some comment about food costs. So without even giving us a courtesy of pretending like he went to ask the chef, he said it couldn't be done. He then tried to direct us to other a la carte items on the menu, but the lack of accommodation combined with his snotty attitude left a very poor impression. When I ordered my steak, I asked for Medium Well (and then added Medium Well Plus, because I have often found in my experiences that when I ask for a steak medium well, it come out very much medium because the steaks are so thick -- and so I thought I would emphasize to the waiter and hopefully the cooking staff that I would like to make sure it's more on the medium well side for the entire steak by saying Medium Well Plus). I wasn't trying to do anything more --- and yet our snooty waiter, the moment I said Medium Well Plus gave me a look and said "We can't really do that." After seeing how my wife had been treated in her order and knowing how much it had pissed her off, I laughed out loud when the waiter decided to double down with his snooty response to my request. He went away, but at this point, we contemplated just getting up and leaving. Spoke to management and were moved to a different table. New waiter was better, but there wasn't much more for the waiter to do and the damage had already been done. The one bright spot is that we complained to management and they did take steps to accommodate us (and also providing a better explanation than the snooty waiter for why the chef could not accommodate the request we made earlier). A clear case of poor customer service management on the part of the waiter.
As for the food, well you would expect the steak to be great at a place called Steak with a $62 price tag. And indeed, it was a good steak, but I would not say it was anymore amazing then what I've encountered at so many other steak places in town. So in that respect, it was just okay. My wife's entree consisted of a single small lobster tail. No sides by either of us (given that we almost left after ordering entrees, you can understand why we chose not to order any sides at that point). The complimentary bread was good, but I felt it took them to long to bring it out.
We had the Sticky Toffee Pudding for dessert. And that was probably the highlight of the entire evening. It salvaged the overall bad experience somewhat, but it was still not much of a conciliation. I would recommend that the management make the "stick" of ice cream a little bit bigger to match the portion size of the pudding.
I know this review isn't going to have any impact whatsoever on people continuing to dine with Gordon Ramsay -- this type of restaurant is the type people go to regardless of a negative Yelp reviews (and probably overshadowed by the hundreds of other "glowing" reviews by diners who feel obligated to give a glowing review of such establishments in order to justify the outrageous amount of money spent on such dining). But I wanted there to be at least one review out that that calls this place out for what it really is -- another affront for bourgeois snobbery in a town that sadly has too much of that around these days. Too many fine dining diners go to these restaurants and think they have had an amazing dining experience just because of the ambiance, presentation of the food on the plate and the final bill price. I'm here to say that it takes more than just fancy presentation and overpriced entrees to make a restaurant a truly fine dining experience.
|
![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)
![[cxml]](/fct/images/cxml_doc.png)
![[csv]](/fct/images/csv_doc.png)
![[text]](/fct/images/ntriples_doc.png)
![[turtle]](/fct/images/n3turtle_doc.png)
![[ld+json]](/fct/images/jsonld_doc.png)
![[rdf+json]](/fct/images/json_doc.png)
![[rdf+xml]](/fct/images/xml_doc.png)
![[atom+xml]](/fct/images/atom_doc.png)
![[html]](/fct/images/html_doc.png)