[QUOTE=Spud]
;. Many of the high end “chains” stake their reputation almost as much on the service as the food. They are very well trained on how to give amazing service. Your chair will be pulled out, your napkin will be placed in your lap, your water will never get below the 3/4 mark… drop a fork and you will have a new one before you can blink. Casually mention that you love their rolls and you will have more than you can imagine and likely a doggy bag of them for you to take home.
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None of this happened at Mortons. I was more or less ignored.
I’ve been either blessed or cursed with a gift of $100 at Morton’s from my employer.
If we go to Morton’s and don’t order wine or cocktails, and request to share items, will we be happily accommodated or treated like lepers? Not that we’re trying to be cheap, but I rarely drink and my husband can’t drink. As for sharing, he’s had bariatric surgery, so eating a huge meal is physically impossible. From the handful of receipts I’ve seen on Yelp, it looks like we can eat there for about $150.
For reference, we usually go to Outback and split a porterhouse meal with added sauteed mushrooms. He’ll take about a third of my baked potato, and that with the tenderloin side of the porterhouse is enough for him. If he’s ravenous, he might sneak a bite or two of my salad.
Truth be told, I’d have preferred a gift card to Outback… I’m looking forward to trying a better grade of steak, but between the crazy prices and a roughly four hour round trip for us to get to Morton’s, I’m still thinking I was given a white elephant.
a) It looks like Mortons has lower prices and smaller portions at lunch. If you go to their website, you can look up which locations have lunch hours. As for sharing, I would think they would accomodate sharing items without a fuss, but perhaps someone more knowledgable will reply.
b) There are numerous websites where you can sell gift cards for cash, or exchange for other ones. I haven’t used any, but you can probably recover a large portion of the $100 gift card to use as you see fit.
I think lunch is a good suggestion. Also, it is often easier to spit a meal in the more casual bar area. No one will care if you’re drinking iced tea or coke and no one will expect you to buy a bottle of wine if you don’t want one. Enjoy it.
ETA: As for being treated like lepers, I worked in the food industry for about ten years, it’s important to remember that the cooks and wait staff are all working class stiffs and most don’t enjoy putting on airs.
Interesting… I’ve eaten probably at least 75- 100 meals in various high end steak houses around the nation (plus Mexico and Canada) and have never had bad service. Chains and non… they all had top notch service.
I have. Just once, at Smith & Wollensky, in New York. The service was abysmal. Disappearing waiters, mixed-up orders arriving at different times. Just terrible.
Or maybe a late lunch? I went to Capitol Grille, granted not in the same league maybe, at 2 pm and while I ordered a steak my relatives didn’t see any appetizing entrée and so got a $7 appetizer each and we still had great service. Of course that’s to be expected since the bill still came out to over $50 and there was maybe 1 other party in the place.