ONYX Steakhouse — Restaurant in White Rock

My wife and I went to Onyx in late January, 2016. As new residents to White Rock, we were looking forward to finding a nice place to eat near our home. Our experience is as follows: we made an online reservation and arrived on time. There was confusion upon arrival with other guests and a couple tables waited quite some time to get seated, I would say these people waited at least 20 minutes when they didn't/shouldn't have to. They could have accommodated these guests with the available seating they had and dealt with it, but they made them wait instead. We were seated among the confusion and by the time the server took our drink order, we were contemplating leaving as this took way longer than it should have. At least 20-30 minutes. Our drinks came several minutes (15 or so) later and we placed our order. I feel that it took quite a long time to get our food. Far longer by comparison of other restaurants. When it finally did arrive, it was barely warm. By most restaurant standards, it would be considered cold. The steak that I ordered was cooked medium rare as requested but unfortunately, it was very bland and quite tough. The rest of the food on the plate was also lukewarm, overcooked veggies and terribly under seasoned. My wife had the steak as well and had the same problem. Bland, not hot enough, ridiculously under seasoned. So our experience with the food: really not very good. Big disappointment. As for the service: worse than the food. I felt like there was enough staff to cover the restaurant efficiently. However, they did seem more interested in interacting with each other than the guests. This restaurant has the recipe for a really amazing place but it just sucks as an experience. I felt like there was an overall attitude, like they were the best thing ever but they are just not and they don't realize it, like watching a slow motion train wreck. It's really bad, people. Abysmal service and food that is not even worthy of half the price they're charging. Hopefully, there will be enough reviews of this place that they will adjust their attitude, teach their servers about customer service and cooks on how to cook and season food properly so that it can be the great local restaurant we are all hoping for. Subsequently, we went to Milestones for Valentine's Day. The food and service destroyed Onyx by comparison. If you want to go and check it out, try it and you'll understand exactly what I'm talking about and your disappointment should be reflected in a review so maybe they'll get the hint. If you're on the fence, just go to any of the other local restaurants who know how to treat their guests (and food) to avoid the disappointment. We thought it sucked. Go to the Keg, Boathouse or even Milestones. We won't be going back. Sorry for the scathing review, Onyx but...

EDIT It is now Monday evening and I received no phone call, as promised, Friday, nor any other day. In all honesty, I’m not surprised.

If I could give less stars, I would. This was my worst dining experience in the lower mainland, by far. Allow me to give some context; we had an early reservation due to a Christmas Eve service. We arrived on time and we greeted and sat. This place was freezing. My entire party wore their coats the entire meal. Some excuse was made about the heaters upstairs being malfunctioning, or something to the like. Next drinks, we didn’t order anything special. However one of my guests asked for a margarita, and we were told they don’t do blended drinks. Ok, fair enough. Next on to our entrees. We all placed our orders and we were going about our business and about 10 minutes later we were informed that they were out of rib steak and one of my guests would have to order something different. Ok, strike two. So, we waited and we waited, as this was early there weren’t that many patrons at the time. I watched our meals come up and they just sat there for 12-15 minutes before they were served to us. Needless to say, they were cold and underwhelming. The sides tasted like had seen heat at some point and my steak was lukewarm at best. In addition to all of this nonsense, we were literally abandoned by waitress for immense gaps of time. You would think with a restaurant trying compete at this price point, the service would be impeccable, but not even close. At one point, the manager asked how our food was and I expressed my displeasure. I kept it very subdued at the wishes of my party. I mentioned that our food was cold and he disappeared; didn’t even bother to follow up. So to make it all better we were offered a dessert to make up for our lousy meal. Gee thanks, an $8 dessert makes this whole $300 meal all better. What a complete and utter disappointment this experience was. And to cap it all off when the cheque came and I produced my credit card, I was informed, verbatim, they don’t take that card as “it costs them too much.” So, my recommendation is to save your money and do NOT waste your time here. Alternatively, spend the time and go to Hy’s, Gotham or Black + Blue in Vancouver. Given our experience, you’d be better...

Service was just terrible, food was not to bad, but could have been better. This is why:

Me & My Boyfriend, were very exciting to go to this place, since we had gift cards.When we got there there was only two other people there. We thought this would be great nice & quite.

When we got seated, our waitress gave us attitude right away. My boyfriend wanted to know if they had any fountain drinks, pepsi or coke. She looked at him angrily and said in a very rude tone, there was. Not telling us what kind there was, but only they have fountain drinks. So my boyfriend had to ask her do they coke, pepsi or rootbeer. The waitress was getting more ticked off. So he order a coke. 5mins later she gives us our drinks. Right away my boyfriend could tell this was not the drink he order. She gave him a diet coke, not coke. So he asked her nicely if he could get a coke, and told her she got him a diet coke. She grabbed his drink and walked away. 5mins later, she gave him another ... diet coke. So at this point, my boyfriend just said he will take a sprite and be done with it.

We quickly order our meals, quite simple, two steaks. 12oz - medium rare, and a 7oz - medium. Apparently not, my steak was pretty much Rare, very bloody. But I didnt want to fret about it, I was worried I would get my meal spit on. We didn't get an refills on our drinks nor asked about how we like our meals. At this point we were the only people in the restaurant. As we finished up, I asked for my mine to boxed since I had 1/3 of my steak not eaten, and half of my potatoes & veggies. It took the waitress 20mins to get our bill and to get my meal boxed. We were the only people in the restaurant, why was this taking forever?

We used the gift cards to pay our meal, and grabbed the box and got out. This was yesterday we did all of this, and today I opened the box of my left overs, to only find potatoes & veggies. No steak. Where is my Steak?? I am outraged! I had 1/3 of my steak left over on my plate at the restaurant! Where is it? I am very glad we didnt have to pay out of our wallets!

I will tell you I have never had such terrible service in my life. I had better services at cheaper family restaurants!

I hope the Service in White Rock is better, we still have one more gift card...