A friend and I went for dinner and ordered the same thing - steak medium to medium rare. When the food came out hers was medium and mine was extra-well to shoe leather - black all the way to the center. I mentioned it to the very attentive waiter and he said he'd wondered about that when he was bringing it out. He took it back without further question. The replacement steak was medium well at best and the pommes frites were totally over cooked and cold - as if the chef had pulled them out of the bottom of the fryer from last night. I was not willing to be a repeat complainer, and no one asked how it was, so I ate the middle portion of the steak and the 4-5 fries that were closer to tan than brown.
After we'd paid our bill I thought I should say something, so I told the waiter how dissapointed I had been and that truely the food was sub-par. He walked away and I could see that he was discussing, if not arguing, with the bartender. We waited about 5 minutes and then gave up. On the way out I saw a man in chefs clothes behind the bar. I asked if there were a manager I could talk to and he said I should just talk to him. As I described my evening he just said "yeah, yeah, yeah." At the end he said, "so the problem is that your waiter did not bother to tell us you were unhappy with your food?" I tried to re-explain that the service was actually good (perhaps the highlight of the evening) it was the food that was the problem and furthermore, sending back the first plate should have been warning enough. His next statement was "so what do you want from me?" I simply replied that I thought he would want to know that the food being served was frankly unacceptable and that we would not be returning. At no point was anyone at all apologetic.
Pass on this one - there are better places to eat in Houston.
Pros: attentive wait-staff
Cons: burned/over cooked food, rude management
Laurier Cafe & Wine
1 review –
