After hearing a new steak house opened in North County, my husband and I and another couple made reservations and hoped to have a great experience. Unfortunately, our experience was less than expected. First , when you enter the restaurant, you immediately notice that the bar area occupies a third of the entire square room from the mid to right side. The dining area is flanked center left. In the back you see a waiter area and kitchen. Although everything was decorated very nicely, the bar area and bar crowd was noisy enough to dominate and disctract from the entire dining area. But of more importance is the food. We have dined at the best steak houses and restaurants across the country. It is clear that they use the standard USDA Prime beef but it comes up short from steakhouses like Ruths Chris and Donovan's and others when it comes to cooking techinque and flavor. We even tried some of their accompanied sauces, but they too were not special. For the high price, we expected much better. We could tell the chef and cooks did not come from top notch steakhouses. Our group also tasted some seafood appetizers that we admit had very nice presentations. But to us, we felt that they were sprinkled with too much of this and too much of that ,where it was too confusing for our tastebuds. There were several other things we didn't like. As stated before, the room is one simple square. It was dark, had no windows and no view. Also, the staff and managers were staring at us too much which didn't give us much privacy. But what really turned us off was when we were greeted by an elderly gentleman, I guess a Manager or Chef, I don't know. But when our discussion turned to a nearby competitor and his comments were slightly negative in that they did not use USDA Prime beef, we felt this negativity was not the tone to have when you are the new kid on the block. Our recommendation: drive up to Mastro's in Costa Mesa or Donovans or Ruths Chris locally for a true dining experience.
Pros: new and upscale
Cons: no privacy, noisy bar, food way OVERPRICED only to be okay
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