Paul's Baku Steakhouse — Local services in Baku City

Do not believe the hype... Pauls is not even close to being good value for money. Service is slow, meat is no better than other places in Baku (others are generally much lower prices) and the atmosphere and mood has never been appealling to me. The whole "you have to make reservations" bit is just that, a marketing gimmick. Tables are empty for hours at a time while they turn away patrons. Take a look around Baku... meat is a Baku specialty and there are much better places to get your fill of meat. I do not refer to other restaurants when making a review, but you can look at a number of other places that will serve you a high quality steak at much lower prices. Pauls is good for oilfield business dinners as there tends to be a large amount of oil industry folks frequenting the restaurant on a daily basis... notably if you are going to expense the meal.

Update August 18. The restaurants response to my review adds an exclamation point (I did not count, but perhaps 30 of the exclamation points in a single paragraph) to my stated opinion. Please do read it as it may help to guide your dining decision.

If you happen to find yourself in the fortunate position of having been turned away from this restaurant due to your not having a reservation, do not be stressed. Walk down the hill, cross the road, walk between the parking garage and the (former) Bank Standard and go to the bottom of the stairs... then take an immediate left turn. Walk straight and you will see "The Meating Point" and "Sunset Cafe" within 1 minute (total walking time is less than 5 minutes as these two are within 200 meters of Pauls). Either restaurant serves a good steak, has good service, good drinks, pleasant ambience and all at a fair price. These are just a couple of the nearby restaurants that do not consider good value and attentive service to be a...

Simply overpriced. I have been trying this place over and over in years, even tried the one used to be in Shurabad kite surfing place couple of time, so I am very familiar to the menu and staff. Also may be that was my chance or others I know, whatever chosen from menu was not available most time. No draft beer available whenever I was there so ordering bottled beer is not very attractive to me in such place (may be they have draft beer normally but that option never hit me). There are many good alternatives in city with better taste, more choices and reasonable price. The place remained same over a decade without any change which is good, garden is really nice in good weather but time is changing and I understand at the times when there was no other alternative this place was ok for many people, but unfortunately that is not the case now. For newcomers to city the place could be interesting but once you become aware of other places you will understand what I mean. This is my honest explanation to reason why I gave 2 stars as owner requested...

Very poor meat quality. Can’t understand possibly how this is considered one of ten best steakhouses in Baku. The meat (even medium) was horribly chewy. Very disappointed.

Note: Dear owner, I have no idea why you have emphasized my name.Your approach to responding to my review below shows how responsive you are to critique. Let’s not make this personal. I did contact your staff and told them that the steaks were very chewy. They said that the prime rib eye and rib eye should be chewy and can be tough. Something we obviously disagree with and I’m sure several steakhouses would do so too. There was nothing else said or done to discuss the matter further at your staff’s end. We paid, grabbed a few...