Blacksteer Steakhouse & Saloon — Restaurant in Bend

Bad Food. Worse Service. Food Poisoning. * Avoid This Place *

Top line Bad Service (at best) Awful food – served cold and late. Zero oversight. No customer follow-up. Didn’t care that our food was cold, late and awful. No table beverage service. One diner got Food Poisoning (hospitalized).

We made Saturday night reservations for a nine-person group.

We confirmed our reservation, and we showed up early. A few of the early birds went to the bar first, while the rest of us waited in the lobby and were seated at our table where a person took beverage requests and left. Within five minutes, another staff person came to our table and asked if we wouldn’t mind if they seated us in another section.

We obliged and said, “We just ordered beverages from a person – can you have those moved to the new table?” The staff person said that the beverages would come to the new table (they never did).

All of our group combined at the new table and it was clear that we didn’t have enough settings, water or water glasses waiting. None of the staff seemed to notice once we were seated – not the Hostess or any other servers. It was up to request, and find, additional glasses, silverware and napkins.

The server arrived after a bit. Those of us from the first table told him that we’d already requested beverages – he seemed perplexed by this. Apparently, our request made (15+ minutes earlier) had not been delivered to the bar or communicated to this server. OK, so we requested beverages again (four non-alcoholic bevvies).

We requested Appetizers – Onion Rings, Brussel Sprouts and Bread – for the table. The Onion Rings arrived with the Brussel Sprouts. Both were OK, but neither the plates nor food were hot (perhaps sitting under heat lamps). The garlic-buttered bread arrived and was cold in the middle, warm outside. Since we were all hungry

Initial salads and one soup order arrived after about 10 minutes. Salads were overdressed. The soup was cold (Chowder). We flagged down a server from another section and asked if he could either find our server or take back the soup and heat it up. He found our original server and in five minutes, the soup returned properly heated. Again – we had to find someone else to take care of this situation – our server was absent, as he would be throughout the evening.

Then we waited for our Entrees . . .

We waited. And waited. And waited. And waited . . .

Nobody came to our table to give us an update. Two people stepped away from the table to make phone calls, inasmuch as no meal serving was imminent. It wasn’t.

More than 40+ minutes later, the Entrees arrived. BUT not all at the same time. A few people received their plates. Most didn’t. And the people who received food noticed that their food was not hot – it was lukewarm or cold. The rest of the plates arrived five minutes later. Similarly cold.

The person next to me had a Hamburger. It was cold (hard to do). My pasta was cold and the scallops were old and rubbery + over-sauced. Most of the rest of the people faced similar disappointment. The person who ordered the Rigatoni ate some of his – said it tasted bad. He ended up in the Hospital with Food Poisoning.

I would’ve sent back the pasta I received (cold, old rubbery scallops, over-sauced), BUT THERE WAS NO SERVER WHO EVEN ASKED HOW OUR FOOD WAS. I pushed the plate away.

NOTE: People at a Dining Table behind us complained that they’d received cold, old appetizers that had previously been delivered to another table (you could see the appetizers sitting on the other table after the people left). We overheard this – and it should have been a sign to leave.

There were nine people in the group and all were disappointed.

Summary Food was served cold. Service was lousy at best. Took forever to get food. Over-dressed salad and (served-cold) pasta. No follow-up by server about food or quality. No communication by management or staff. Overpriced. One person ended up in the Hospital with Food Poisoning. Do not go...

My wife and I were visiting Bend to run some shopping errands, when out of nowhere, she got a craving for mashed potatoes and gravy. Like, REAL mashed potatoes and gravy. We were on Highway 97 driving North, and we happened to glance to our left to see a stone siding building with a black silhouette of a steer. We immediately turned on our left turn signal and began making our way into the parking lot for Blacksteer Steakhouse & Saloon. It was shortly after 2:30pm (a half hour before they were officially open for the evening). My wife walked up to the main entrance assuming that we were too early and we would need to figure out what their hours were. The front door was unlocked, so she walked in. The host informed her that they actually open at 3, but he still welcomed her in and said he would seat her anyway. We perused over the menu and ordered some drinks. We ordered the crab cakes as an appetizer and the buttermilk fried chicken and mashed potatoes to split as our entree. It’s a LOT of food. Obviously the crab cakes arrived first, and my wife dug right in! She claims to have never found a great crab cake in Central Oregon. Up until now, the best crab cake she had ever had was in New York City. But today, Blacksteer Steakhouse changed her favorite. I’m not a fan of seafood, so I can’t speak to the quality…but she ate both of them. She commented on the yummy, garlic aioli, that replaces the traditional tartar sauce. Then, one beer down and an appetizer later, our buttermilk friend chicken arrives! Gently placed on a bed of pillowy sour cream mashed potatoes, and nuzzled up against a mound of fresh, sautéed green beans, were the GIANT pieces of moist, crispy chicken. Half of a chicken!!! Breast, thigh and drumstick with flaky, crunchy, buttermilk coating taking up a large portion of the plate. Perfectly seasoned. Chef’s kiss, delicious! And don’t even get me started on the warm cornbread and honey butter!!! Oh my Lordy…I could eat that stuff until I die of gluttony. Once we ate more food than two 40+ year olds should, our server, Brandon came back around to ask us if we were ready to pay our bill, or if we were interested in hearing the dessert options. We agreed to hear what the options were, since this was our first time trying the place out. We decided on the 4 berry cobbler with vanilla ice cream. The cobbler’s oat topping was perfectly toasted and crunchy paired with the slight tartness of the berries within! Overall, I would proclaim that we had a very pleasant impromptu dining experience at the Blacksteer Steakhouse & Saloon, and we are already planning on visiting again to try other menu items. Thank you, Blacksteer Steakhouse for providing a great new restaurant to enjoy some quality, delicious cuisine.

UPDATE: My wife and I went back on a Sunday afternoon. She was craving some crab cakes and mashed potatoes again. I decided to try something else on the menu. We were there during Happy Hour, so I chose the Black Steer Double Burger and Beer Happy Hour deal for $15. The burger came with fries and a pint of beer. I expected it to be just a “normal” burger…but it turned out to be one of the most delicious burgers I’ve had in a long time! It got a little messy near the completion of consumption, but it was “perfectly pink” as I like to call it. Not bloody. The burger came with a side of fries. They weren’t exceptional fries, by any stretch of the imagination, but they paired well with the tasty burger and beer. 😋 We’re already trying to find reasons to plan to come back again!!! Susan was our server this time. She was very down-to-Earth and nonchalant. She is knowledgeable about their menu items and personable to have a normal conversation with. We hope this business sticks around Central Oregon for a long time, because we are really starting...

We went to the restaurant for Mother's Day dinner with my wife, daughter, and mother-in-law. Unfortunately it wasn't great timing with prom as there were a few large parties of high schoolers already seated, but fortunately no wait for the four of us to be seated.

We had a really long wait for food which we tried to be understanding given how busy of a night it was. Our waitress was very kind and apologetic, checked in on the order a few times, and kept up with our drink refills. I did see that several other tables received their food before us that arrived after we did. I did my best to let it go since it was busy.

Unfortunately, when we got our steaks, they were not only cooked wrong, but food arrived cold. My wife and mother-in-law's filets were ordered medium rare and arrived medium well, and my strip steak was fat and gristle down the middle. The $35 lobster tails were barely warm.

The experience got much worse when the new restaurant GM got involved. We explained that we understood it was busy and we weren't angry. However, it is a bit frustrating after a long wait for the food to be delivered wrong and cold and asked for them to be redone. Shockingly, she then began to argue with us. She blamed my wife for ordering wrong when we were told to order slightly more done than we would prefer, not even listening that they were cooked well above what we ordered. Then she started making excuses about how busy it was with reservations and prom, giving us the impression that our table really didn't matter.

She then took the overdone steaks and lobster to go get them redone, not even giving me time to get a word in to send back my plate because I lost my appetite. About five minutes later, she comes rushing back over, and says that we had been there an hour and twenty minutes (Actually an hour and forty five), and the kitchen was running about an hour for meals. She then asked if we wanted to just comp the food, or wait the 15-20 minutes for the replacements. The customer service training sort of kicked in at that point, because she then asked us in a huff what she could do to make it right. My wife did want to eat dinner, so we asked to go ahead with the reorder, which we thought was already going on. We also asked them to box them to go, since we would be there about two hours once everything was done and we needed to get back home.

In the end, they removed my meal that I didn't eat, and took 50% off my wife and mother-in-law's orders. The final kicker is that they ran my card for the wrong table and tried to charge me almost 2.5 times our discounted total. We had to call the GM back over, which she was so thrilled to deal with us again, to get charged out correctly.

I do feel bad for our server Patti, she was great and was stuck in a really bad situation. I can say with that GM running the restaurant, there is no way we would ever consider going back there or recommend it to...