I went to Lawry's with my boyfriend for our anniversary for the first time.
When we stepped into Lawry's the decor seemed lovely- lots of chandeliers, more sophisticated, with tons of presentation at the entry.
Our server introduced herself as "Ms. Something-or-other" (I'm choosing to omit her name), which struck us as a bit odd, but it was clearly Lawry's policy. Our server was a distracting and odd combination of cold and hospitable- everything she conversed with us was evidently recited from memory and "perfect"- almost like she had been trained to say certain things, and the experience was uncomfortably robotic.
Everything was overly-presented- from height pouring on salad dressing on a spinning salad (makes no effect on the taste) to the formality the servers are clearly told to act with. On top of all this, on the Monday night we went, we literally heard "Happy Birthday" being sung every 3-4 minutes, I almost felt like they just do it at every table for desert! =)
When our actual meals arrived, the meat was carved in front of us on a large rolling cart, and after an average salad, we assumed that the main course was going to make us forgive the salad- afterall, this is a steak house. With the level of presentation you really feel like it MUST be good, whether or not your mouth thinks so- but the steak was among the more average of steaks we had both had. It didn't register as bad, it didn't register as amazing- just an alright steak. Dissapointing considering the reputation- if I had had this steak at IHOP, I would have just thought "wow, IHOP has pretty good steak for 8.99".
We decided to order strawberries and chocolate for dessert, and most of the strawberries were overly ripe (verrrry mushy- eew)
I really wanted to like Lawry's- but it just glowed with being overly self-special with all the "this is how we do things", and our service would have been perfect if she was not afraid to loosen up and "be there" rather than phoning in personal warmth.
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