| rev:text
| - Visited Ken Stewart's on Valentine's Day. The overall dining experience was great and I was in excellent company. However, considering the price tag, there are far better choices elsewhere.
Service:
My date and I were greeted at the door and quickly shown to our reserved seats. The waitress was cordial, knowledgeable about the menu (including wagyu beef grading system), and imparted a warm feeling to a subjectively biased, already pleasant Valentine's Day evening. Coat check personnel was slightly awkward as she gave us our coat and abruptly looked the other way to greet an entering group of guests.
Food:
Oysters for appetizers, U.S.D.A. prime aged petite filet mignon + lobster tail for me, "true" Japanese 100% wagyu beef from Kagoshima + lobster tail for my date, sides of brussel sprouts and creamed spinach, and a chocolate cake for dessert (which came with a complimentary chocolate-covered strawberry).
Ambiance:
Dressy. Lots of old white men in suits with their dress-up dates. The occasional smattering of middle aged/youngsters (perhaps dining here on this special occasion).
For a price tag well above 3 digits, I expect to be treated only slightly short of royalty. And as for the food, I expected it to be AMAZING. Who knows, maybe my expectations are too high? After all, how amazing can food be? Maybe there's a saturation point and things taste pretty much the same once it hits the $40+ mark. Well, by that logic, then we would all be fools for going to places that charge beyond that amount right? I've seen more plump oysters, tasted better seared and flavored filet mignons, and definitely had better lobsters. The lobster tail was a $40 add on and it was pretty dry and tough. I tried the wagyu, pretty good...but $130 good? Was my mouth dancing with joy, was I transported to Japan on clouds, did I want that moment to last forever? Nope, not at all. Brussel sprouts were undercooked (unless you like the bitter crunch) and spinach was overcooked (unless you like mush). Dessert was just your average 'ol dessert. Can't really go wrong with chocolate cake. No idea what small amount of fortune it was though.
So if this was an episode of master chef and I was one of the judges having to put a price tag on this meal, I would say my dinner should've been $70 tops ($200 total including what my date had and what we shared). And those are generous estimates. But instead, I'm pretty sure the bill was well above that. To make things worse, a couple of days later I bought a T-bone USDA choice steak from Dave's supermarket. Pan seared it in butter and olive oil along with a butter poached lobster tail (ordered frozen from internet!). And both my steak and lobster was FAR more delicious. In the end, either Ken Stewart's deserves no more than 3 stars or I should quit my day job and open up a competing steak/seafood restaurant!
|
![[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)