Burwell's Stone Fire Grill -a stunning dissapointment
Every so often I will be posting restaurant reviews. These are strictly my personal opinions and views. This is what I thought of my most recent dining experience:
After 24 years of cooking professionally, I am not easily impressed. This especially holds true for all these new trendy, hip, hot-right-now, uber chic, over-priced, over-rated, too impresed with themselves, "steak houses".
The hubs and I were in to Burwell's on what looked like a very busy mid-week night last week. We had a reservation, and we greeted and seated promptly. We looked over the menu and everything started out great. Then our waitress arrived to take out cocktail order. I said "well, I'm not sure what I'm drinikng yet (we'd already ordered a bottle of San Pellegrino), what are this evening's specials?"
She got this very snotty look-down-her-nose at us face: seriously she actually tilted her head back and LOOKED DOWN HER NOSE AT ME! She says "When you make your cocktail selection, THEN...I will tell you the specials, " and she quickly sachéd away: This set the tone for the meal.
We ordered a bottle of wine (which I guess was barely good enough to warrant us being graced with the evening's selections), and the waitress rambled off the specials, sounding very impressed with herself; as if they were shat out of the platinum lined asshole of God himself.
Not hearing anything worth ordering from her we went back to the menus. Nothing in the entrée selections impressed me enough to wanna shell out $30-50 for a plate, which by the way comes with all side items à la carte. Yup that's right, you are going to pay a king's ransome for that 6 ouce fillet, and STILL just get "steak on a plate" . If you want a veggie with that, be prepared to bend over, assume the position, and shell out another $6-8 per side. I've been a chef long enough to what things cost. Potatoes and grean beens are seriously not worth that!
We ordered soups, salads, and a couple of apps, which ended up being quite enough. I found the she-crab soup to be one of the worst I've ever had in SC. There was no flavor to it at all, nor any detectable crab or crab roe. The iceberg salad was ok, but the blue cheese parfait chunks were strange: They were the flavor and texture of blue cheese JELLO. The appetizers were good, and the portions were decent, so we did enjoy those. But the bill for a bottle of wine and a few "starters" was $130 before tip.
Sadly this is average for most of the high-end steakhouses downtown. I personally don't feel that Burwell's is worth the expense. There is an old Japanese saying: "Every man should climb Mt. Fuji once, but only a fool would climb it twice."
After 24 years of cooking professionally, I am not easily impressed. This especially holds true for all these new trendy, hip, hot-right-now, uber chic, over-priced, over-rated, too impresed with themselves, "steak houses".
The hubs and I were in to Burwell's on what looked like a very busy mid-week night last week. We had a reservation, and we greeted and seated promptly. We looked over the menu and everything started out great. Then our waitress arrived to take out cocktail order. I said "well, I'm not sure what I'm drinikng yet (we'd already ordered a bottle of San Pellegrino), what are this evening's specials?"
She got this very snotty look-down-her-nose at us face: seriously she actually tilted her head back and LOOKED DOWN HER NOSE AT ME! She says "When you make your cocktail selection, THEN...I will tell you the specials, " and she quickly sachéd away: This set the tone for the meal.
We ordered a bottle of wine (which I guess was barely good enough to warrant us being graced with the evening's selections), and the waitress rambled off the specials, sounding very impressed with herself; as if they were shat out of the platinum lined asshole of God himself.
Not hearing anything worth ordering from her we went back to the menus. Nothing in the entrée selections impressed me enough to wanna shell out $30-50 for a plate, which by the way comes with all side items à la carte. Yup that's right, you are going to pay a king's ransome for that 6 ouce fillet, and STILL just get "steak on a plate" . If you want a veggie with that, be prepared to bend over, assume the position, and shell out another $6-8 per side. I've been a chef long enough to what things cost. Potatoes and grean beens are seriously not worth that!
We ordered soups, salads, and a couple of apps, which ended up being quite enough. I found the she-crab soup to be one of the worst I've ever had in SC. There was no flavor to it at all, nor any detectable crab or crab roe. The iceberg salad was ok, but the blue cheese parfait chunks were strange: They were the flavor and texture of blue cheese JELLO. The appetizers were good, and the portions were decent, so we did enjoy those. But the bill for a bottle of wine and a few "starters" was $130 before tip.
Sadly this is average for most of the high-end steakhouses downtown. I personally don't feel that Burwell's is worth the expense. There is an old Japanese saying: "Every man should climb Mt. Fuji once, but only a fool would climb it twice."
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