Bartlett's — Restaurant in Austin

Another very fine dining experience at our favorite restaurant in Austin. Patrick greeted us and took our drink order. We like him very much. He is nice and personable and always a delight to have a little chat with. Evan was our server and he was attentive, nice and professional.

If you like chicken tortillas soup that is not your everyday chicken tortilla soup .... try theirs. We order it almost every time we enjoy dining at Bartlett's. We do ask them to heat it up temperature wise a little extra for us as we like our soup to be hot ! It is not just a clear broth soup ... they do something to thicken the soup base and there is the perfect spicing and pieces of chicken, avocado, cheese and tortilla strips on top. Pure yum ! Yes, even in the heat of the Texas summer we order it.

Dinner for me was a traditional salad with the steak added to it. I also ask them to add tomatoes for me and they do. If I get something different I have the aged ribeye with a delicious teriyaki / pineapple marinade. Melts in your mouth delish. Plus, they know how to bake potatoes! And, they use real butter and real bacon ! It is those nice touches that keeps us coming back over and over to Bartlett's.

My hubby had their cheeseburger with added bacon and avocado. He never eats like that but he treated himself. He usually has a salad with chicken or salmon but he was feeling a burger and went for it. It was huge. He ate 3/4s of it and brought home the rest and I enjoyed it the next day. I may have to order that when we go back in a couple of weeks. It is not your regular burger -- cooking over a real grill makes everything better.

We try to go every 4-6 weeks -- we do not live in Austin so we make a special trip. We have done this for a few years now. It really is nice to be recognized by the employees who have treated us so well through the years and even the management team.

We recently went to Vegas and ate at two restaurants that are highly rated and supposed to be fabulous. One was a steakhouse and one was Italian. After each meal as we were leaving we looked at each other and said .... "Bartlett's is better. The food and service are better at our Bartlett's in Austin." One of the places we ate in Vegas was an Emeril LaGasse place and the other was some other well known chef and it was a pricey Italian place. The places were both fine but the food at Bartlett's is always better.

If you are wondering if you should go... yes ! I suggest to make a reservation -- unless you go around 3pm on a weekday you will have to wait ! ...

Heard a lot about this place and wanted to give it a try. It's always mentioned in best chicken tenders in Austin, in addition to excellent steaks and generally high quality food.

The good: waiter was superb and very affable, made me feel very comfortable and encouraged feedback.

when I had issues with my food they worked to correct them and didn't hassle me about it.

manager checked in more than once

well trained general and support staff

some of the food I sent back, when it came back, was delicious

The bad:

this place is nice, and it's pricy. The food should be the highlight and it absolutely was not.

broccoli was chewing wood chips when it first came out. When I asked it to be properly cooked it came back perfect, however, so props there.

the chicken tenders were a mixed bag. I had three that were wonderful and then two that were soggy like they'd been put in plastic after frying (see pictures).

dessert was way too expensive for what it was, and if I'm paying $15 for a small slice of cheesecake the texture needs to be better, not on the acceptable half of overdone.

even for weekday lunch the place was packed, so wait times can be long

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The chef came out and was very responsive when I explained the issue and did agree that the tenders being so soggy and the broccoli so hard was not acceptable, and I appreciated the chance to talk to him.

Everyone has good and bad days, and they let me down today. I'd love to come back and give them another try if they think they could up their game and wow me. But I'm guessing with all their business they're not very bothered at the moment. I'll update if I...

I need to preface this by saying: I don't normally write reviews, but Bartletts' customer service really surprised me today and I believe they deserve a shout out.

I ordered their Asian Salad with Steak for lunch as take out. The salad itself was $18 and the steak add on was $10. I ended up paying about $35 after tax and tip, just for the salad. In my opinion, this is quite an expensive dish to have as lunch (just to feed myself on a Monday rather than in a social setting) but I had ordered this salad in the restaurant many, many times before and I knew that the size and flavor made it worth the price.

To my surprise, when I opened my order, I found that the salad was considerably smaller than the one I have gotten at the restaurant.

As mentioned, it is not my style to leave a negative review but I was very disappointed with my experience, so I decided to give them a quick call and just let them know.

Well, Bartletts' Manager handled my call so graciously and offered multiple solutions to turn my experience around. I insisted that none of it was necessary since I really just wanted to find out why my experience had been different from my previous dine-in visits (maybe they had ran out of lettuce today or something), but they still went ahead and remedied things, within minutes, no questions asked.

I would have never expected them to do this, but I truly appreciate them going above and beyond to leave a positive impression. Their asian steak salad, their burgers and their apple Cobbler are amazing. I will continue being a loyal customer and I encourage anyone who hasn't to...