The Light Horse Restaurant and Bar — Restaurant in Alexandria

We were on our way back home and passed through old town. We were hungry but had no particular meal plans. We happened to notice a convenient parking spot on US-1 southbound just off King Street and thought, "hey, let's stop and grab a bite, somewhere."

As usual for a Friday night, most of the restaurants in Old Towne were jammed up with anything from 15-45 minute waits for walk-ins. We stumbled upon Light Horse and there was no line and the menu looked good. The surfeit of free tables at a restaurant in Old Towne on a Friday night should have been a clue, though.

We ordered an appetizer of their olives. My wife and I both love olives. We love black olives, green olives and everything in between. We like them pitted or unpitted. We like them stuffed with pimentos, cheeses, garlic and peppers. We like them jarred in water or in oil. You get the idea: we like olives in just about any preparation. We did not like this olive appetizer. Learned a very important lesson, tonight: one should never serve olives heated. The appetizer smelled and tasted like hot sick.

That disaster pushed aside and returned, we ordered the bacon-wrapped, goat cheese-stuffed dates. They were pretty damned tasty.

I ordered the lamb shoulder with scallion-mashed potatoes. The shoulder was a bit over-done and under-tastey. A wine that normally pairs well with lamb utterly dominated this preparation. The potatoes, for being mixed with scallions tasted like mashed bland. The scallions were more like speed-bumps than flavor-enhancers.

My wife ordered the angus over brusselssprouts. It was OK - certainly better than the lamb. The brusselssprouts tasted good, but the chef had been a bit over-agressive in his caramelization of them.

Overall, it wasn't the worst dining experience I've ever had, but at $100 for two people for mediocre food, I won't be going out of our way...

I truly wish I could give zero stars. I recently ordered delivery from The Light Horse on a visit to DC, and this was the worst experience I've ever had with delivery in ANY town. I ordered food at 8:30 pm, and was quoted a 9:27 pm delivery time. Cool! An hour wait time is pretty reasonable, so I'm not sweating it. Then the penny drops...the delivery service calls at 9:20 pm and asks if I cancelled the order. I say, no, of course not! I'm waiting on this 3 and a half star food from The Light Horse! They proceed to tell me that the restaurant is saying that I called and cancelled the order, but I assure them that, no I did not and I'd like them to continue with the order as long as the wait won't increase too much. They call the restaurant back to get things squared away, then they call me back and say Light Horse had just started making the order and now and I should get it between 10:20 and 10:30. What really sucks is I'm out of town, don't know what else to get and I've now wasted an hour of time waiting on food that will never come. At this point, I don't trust their food or their service. I don't know what kind of terrible food I would have coming my way, or what they might do to it, so I cancel the order and decide to call the restaurant myself to complain. That's when I have the pleasure of "meeting" Duncan. Duncan is rude and dishonest from jump. He has an attitude as soon as I let him know who I am, and the reason I'm calling and proceeds to say the food is almost done, then says the delivery person already has the food and should be on the way. So basically, he's lying. When I try to call him out on this, he says "I gotta get back to business" and hangs up on me. All I can say is, this place is terrible, and Duncan is...a lot of things I can't say here. They are terrible ambassadors for their town.

Zero out...

Okay folks, here goes. I hate to think that in this day and age racism should still exist but who am I kidding.

I was invited here for an event that started at 9m. I arrived an hour early so that I could have a quick bite to eat before everyone else arrived for a night of drinks. I was seated in the downstairs dining section. After waiting about five minutes I still had no service.

Another couple walks in and are seated directly beside me. They are promptly greeted and served by the waiter....okay....Yall know me...Just as rudely as I was being ignored, I rudely interrupted him and asked with a smile on my face was he my server for the evening as well. He looks at me as if he's seeing me for the very first time and says, "Yes, can I help you with anything?", as if I was bothering him. I said you sure can. I ordered a beverage and he continues on his way.

I discreetly watch him walk back and forth a few times on the main floor between other tables. He then proceeds back to the couple's table that came in after me and asks what they would like to order first....really??? Again, you are blatantly ignoring the hell outta me...seriously. Lol. This is becoming a comical satire at this point.

Oh ok, so you wanna play games.....okay. I know it's now my move. So after he has worked his tables full of his own kind, he comes back over. I order my food items, again with a great smile on my beautiful face. When the check comes, I write "Excellent Service", in the tip block, with a huge happy face. It was definitely ridiculous, I definitely hope he treats people who look like me better next time.

Food was good though, minus the Buffalo Wings....I don't know what they tasted like, but they were absolutely disgusting. It was such a shame with the waiter service as well.

Will I return? NO. Will I...