Cheesetique — Restaurant in Alexandria

My wife and I ate dinner here on Saturday early evening during restaurant week. The food was awful. The service was fine. The wait time to get food was over an hour with 6 tables being full in the restaurant.

My wife and I are not very critical of places. We hardly ever leave reviews that are anything except 5/5 for places because we like to give the benefit of the doubt on things, but we felt like this experience was so bad it did warrant a negative review.

We went on a date to Cheestique and expected a great restaurant week experience since the assumption is the kitchen and staff would be putting their best foot forward for the week.

We ordered from the compressed restaurant week menu all up front - myself ordering the tomato soup and my wife ordering the Caesar salad. These were the only two appetizer options. When ordering entrees, we were informed the nearly all the options were 86'd already. We ate at 7 pm. The 5 original options were Black Truffle Gnocchi, chicken pot pie, shrimp and grits, lasagna, and braised pork shoulder. They were out of the gnocchi, shrimp and grits, and lasagna. My wife and I begrudgingly both chose the braised pork shoulder. For desert we ordered the chocolate mousse and pumpkin cheesecake. With dinner we received a glass of prosecco included in the $40 per person price tag.

After ordering, we waited around 45-50 minutes before getting our appetizer. My wife's Caesar salad was fine. Seemed like something you'd find in an airport grab and go station but it was fine. The tomato soup was actually terrible. I am not picky when it comes to food. I can count on one hand the foods I have had from around the world that I legitimately didn't like enough to try twice and this tomato soup is one of them. It tasted like watered down V8 tomato juice with cheese mixed in. It was awful and set the tone for the rest of the evening unfortunately.

For the entree, we waited another 25 minutes or so. Around 10 minutes before they came out, we were informed that they were now out of potatoes, and that we could substitute them for french fries or opt for an extra portion of carrots. We both chose for french fries. When the pork came out, it looked like it had been cooked in a middle school cafeteria, and tasted like it too. If you bought a boston butt pork shoulder from Harris Teeter, dropped it into a crock pot until it was cooked, and put it on a plate - that is what it looked and tasted like. A notable lack of any taste at all. The carrots looked and tasted like they had been simply shaved and boiled. The "glaze" was nearly nonexistent.

Our dessert was fine. Nothing spectacular. We were just happy it wasn't like our first two courses.

I will say we were extremely disappointed overall. The restaurant wasn't busy at all, yet was extremely loud from the party of 6 obnoxious drunk adults yelling at the football game on TV (I yell for football games, my wife yells for football games, just not in wine bar/ fine dining room). The service was fine, but was extremely slow. The food was terrible. We will not be returning to the restaurant and we wont be referring anyone in the future. Hopefully others who dine here dont share...

I cannot recommend this restaurant.

Let’s start with the most glaring problem: The cheese was fine. This doesn’t sound like a problem, but hear me out: Fine/acceptable cheese is acceptable at almost anyplace that doesn’t specialize in cheese. In a place that makes cheese their business, it’s a fatal flaw. If you’re called, “Cheesetique,” you gotta stick the landing on the cheese. It’s what you do.

So, I ordered the burrata board and my wife ordered the cheese and charcuterie board. Not only was the cheese largely flavorless (I’m not exaggerating), but the meats and paté were bordering on low quality in terms of flavor. Topping this off, the multigrain and seed crackers they provided had so much flavor that the underpowered cheese and meat couldn’t hope to compete (which, sadly, was an acceptable outcome given how little I liked the cheese and meats). The only redeeming part of our meals was the warm baguette, which was shockingly very good.

Now, if food clocks in at “fine/acceptable,” we’re usually looking at a three and, more often, a four star review. Unless… the service is bad. Well, here we go…

Despite not being terribly busy, our food took quite a while to arrive. When it did, just my wife’s food showed up. Ten mins later, my food showed up. Then, it took repeated requests to get lemon wedges for the water. No one refilled the water. Then, I tried to pay. The check arrived quickly, but somehow no one cashed me out. I communicated non verbally with a male host, who tracked down our server, carrying the check and our credit card. Five minutes later, our completed bill arrived with an apology from our server: The male host was deaf and had miscommunicated.

I corrected our server, noting the deaf male host was trying to find her. She apologized again and said, “Yeah, there was a miscommunication.” How?! He was trying to find you to hand you a credit card and a check? I watched him the whole time. You ignored him. What, exactly, is the miscommunication?

Unreal. So, we left a tip that equates to the level of service we received, refused to take half our uneaten meals home (that’s how bad it was), and left… hungry. Oh, and almost $50 lighter for the privilege of eating at Cheesetique.

I hope my experience is unique, for...

This was my first time visiting Cheesetique and a place like this this past Saturday evening. My fiance and I were very excited to have wine and cheese but was not met with the same eagerness by the bartender. He was very dismissive after we told him to explain things on the menu that were new to us. He brushed us off. At first we thought maybe he was having a bad day but he seemed to be laughing with the other customers. We asked him repeatedly how to pair wine with cheese's and about the menu and how to order. He was just not having it with us. We were going to walk out but decided to stay and just put up with the nastiness because we wanted to try the place out. One of the waiters even asked us how the bartender was treating us. We just hesitated and said good but in reality he knew something was not right. We asked the host to explain the menu and she was she was very upbeat and happy to explain the menu. Dont know what we did to that particular bartender but we didnt deserve that treatment. We will try again as the wine and cheese we had was delicious. We would have ordered more but we were just turned off by the bartenders actions. We debated on giving a tip and we did just for the sake of tipping. The salted caramels were excellent! We may try this place again in hopes to be met with...