Magnum & Steins — Restaurant in St. John's

I usually only write reviews when I feel others will benefit from my experience and sadly in this case it will be negative on several levels.

This is one of those places where the prices ought to reflect the quality and service. i.e. It's a bit pricey.

It was a Saturday night at 8pm, the server read out the evenings "specials" with great speed, and enthusiasm. My wife immediately perked up to the mention of halibut. She asked for clarification on the included potato croquettes because she's not a big fan of goat’s cheese, but was told the goat’s cheese in the croquettes (with prosciutto) was not very noticeable and was largely masked by the prosciutto anyway. She ordered that, and when it came out it was halibut laying on top of what where simply whole smashed baby potatoes - no croquettes. The server, still believing they must be croquettes simply explained away the absence of goat’s cheese or prosciutto by saying it must be mixed in. Now, while the fish was very good and overall nothing wrong with the dish, as one of the nights "specials" it's pretty bad that the kitchen still had the servers describing that dish incorrectly. Strike 1.

I ordered the beef striploin with fries. You usually can’t go wrong with a properly grilled strip. When it arrived I immediately flagged our primary server down to point out it looked to be a piece of beef tenderloin. She didn’t know one way or the other, only that it was the strip that was normally served with fries, and the tenderloin with mashed. She checked with the kitchen, and sure enough it was described as a California thick cut striploin. Google confirmed such a thing, and I accepted I had been schooled. On to the eating. :-) I ordered it med-rare. I cut one piece off (with great effort) and started to chew, and it was so tough that I didn’t put the second piece I cut off (with equalled great sawing) into my mouth. (bear in mind this goes for $48). I flagged the server again, and sent it back as inedible. Strike 2.

We discussed what she could offer that would be quickest and I settled on the halibut, since I had tried what my wife had. It arrived after my wife and another companion were already finished eating. This too had none of the “specials” described croquettes; a point I mentioned later to help her avoid saying the same to new customers. The halibut, unfortunately had not received the same love that my wife’s had but instead was dry and over cooked particularly on the bottom where it was difficult to cut through, as if in an attempt to get it out quickly more heat was used. Who knows? Regardless, I was in no mood to send it back at that point and at least it was edible unlike the beef. Strike 3.

We were buying some of the most expensive offerings and drinks; having wine (between three people: 3 glasses + a half litre wine & a beer) It’s well known that wine is the biggest margin item used for offsetting the slim margins often made on food. I say this because, despite our difficulties with this food, we were offered no discount at all. We had a bad experience at a high price point, and a rather large inconvenience. The only response to my inedible beef striploin meal was just – another meal that was subpar on which I had to wait. Strike 4.

Your repeat customers in a town as small as St. John’s are the only means to building a reliable revenue stream. You would think that large cities like NY, with droves of tourists would care less, but not so. Do anything to upset a first time customer (which we were not), and they won’t be back. We’ll give it a year or two, or change of management before we return again.

The third in our party cannot eat seafood, milk products, or most meat proteins. She can only digest chicken or veg etc. Therefore, she was limited in her choices to two dishes: a simple salad and a stuffed tomato. The only chicken dish on the menu was done in (and I can only assume) resting in a cream based sauce. They could not (or would not) make any accommodation using any other chicken preparation. Many restaurants routinely do...

Although the servers were great the food nor the location was up to par. We were initially seated in the dining room and that area was nice and clean but we opted to move to the patio before we actually had a look at it. The patio seating area is very small and in need of a cleaning or paint job as it looks like it hasn't had any work done in years. Our first seat had water dripping on us from an AC unit positioned above the table and even after we moved it was very uncomfortable from the home made picnic style seating. We ordered the Duck nachos as we have had them in the past and those were great, but the real issue was in the grilled meat platter. Most of the platter was OK but had very little seasoning. The chicken on the other hand was burnt on the outside but raw in the middle. (It's takes a skilled cook to pull that off) Unfortunately we did not notice the raw chicken until after we had eaten some of it. This resulted in my wife getting food poisoning and very sick later that night. We did bring the raw chicken to the servers attention and nothing was done other then stating "that must have been a thick piece". This is not acceptable but as we we're not sick at that time we let it go. For a main we had the salt and vinegar fish because we have had that in the past and loved it. This time however it seems that the recipe had changed and though it still tasted fine there was no taste of salt and vinegar. To say this was a disappointing anniversary dinner is un understatement and we have no plans to...

Not excellent. We had a very rare kid free night so decided to take advantage of it and go out for a nice meal. The drinks were good and with the happy hour prices they weren’t overly expensive. We got one of specials for our appetizer, a surf board of different small fish based bites. It was delicious, until I pulled a long hair out of my mouth after biting into a piece of calamari. That wasn’t so delicious.

For our mains we had the rack of lamb from the menu and one of the specials, fish a chips but the cod was battered with crushed salt and vinegar Miss Vicki’s. That sounded interesting but the salt and vinegar chips didn’t translate to any extra taste at all in the finished product. So in reality it ended up being no different from if they just panko crusted the cod. The chips part of the fish and chips were fine but the dressing and gravy was so salty that it made it nearly inedible. The lamb was decent, like nothing wrong with it really, but I honestly don’t really remember much about it just a little over 12 hours after I ate it. So decent but kind of forgettable. I remember my wife saying that it tasted good when she tried it and agreeing with her, but that’s about it.

The dessert was good. Oreo cheesecake and some kind of chocolate and nut phyllo pastry thing. But the coffee we ordered with it never arrived.

The server was good, pretty attentive and very apologetic about the hairy calamari.

Doubt...