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| - After hearing a lot of buzz about this restaurant, I finally got the chance to check it out. I had attempted to go a few weeks earlier, but the hour wait for a table was a little too much for my already-growling stomach to handle. This time we called in a reservation, which made our wait pretty non-existent.
First thing to note was that the place was very busy and pretty noisy. Not as noisy as Delux, but soft-spoken people are going to have to take it up a notch. Luckily, my party was comprised of pretty loud people, so we were okay. When things did periodically quiet down, there was a pretty cool selection of music playing ranging from Iron and Wine to Simon and Garfunkel.
We were seated at a table in the center of the dining room that had two chairs on one side and a bench seat on the other. Being relatively short, a couple of us found a bit of a challenge sitting in the bench, which is a little lower than at some other places. It wasn't horrible, but we definitely had to sport excellent posture all night.
To start the meal, we ordered the Chicken Nachitos. The portion was not giant, like you see at many other restaurants, but a good size for all five of us to split and still keep our appetites. We ordered a couple of burgers, a prime rib and the crab cakes. The burgers were delicious, possibly even better than those at Delux (gasp!). The review of the prime rib was good as well. The crab cakes, which were a special that night, went over well, although for two crab cakes and an ear of corn, the price of $30 seemed a little hefty. For dessert we ordered the Turtle Sundae. It was your average sundea but with the hot fudge and sprinkles on the side, so you can be as conservative or crazy with them as you'd like.
Overall, I enjoyed the place. Cute place, good food, nice atmosphere.
That being said, I do have one complaint in regards to their beverages. Soda is served by the can with a glass of ice, something that is the norm in places like NYC and Europe. That's fine, you don't want the hassle of dealing with a fountain. I'll deal. I will say that it is pretty annoying when combating the desert heat of Phoenix. Charging $2 for a can of soda that probably costs less than a tenth of that when bought in bulk just seems like highway robbery. Phoenix has always been the land of free refills, proabably because it's really hot here and people need to drink a lot of fluids to survive. It's not just the soda that they're stingy with though. A few members of the party ordered iced teas and lemonades, which came already poured in large glasses with ice. That setup seems made for free refills, but they too were charged for each glass. Additionally, there were times when our server or another staff member came up to the table and refilled the glasses without even being asked, helping us to rack up a non-alcoholic drink bill equal to the prime rib. C'mon. It's hot here. Really hot. People drink a lot of liquid. Why be so stingy with the beverages?
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