Bridgeman's Chophouse — Restaurant in Chattanooga

Dined Friday Jan 28, 2022.

Firstly the staff, Dylan, and the rest were very professional and a real asset to your team. Unfortunately your kitchen mega failed twice in one special evening.

We ordered the 34 oz bone in tomahawk to share, raw oysters, lobster bisque, steamed/cold (not broiled) lobster tail, roasted Brussel sprouts, deep fried sweet potatoes and a bottle of wine. Crème Brûlée for dessert.

The Lobster bisque was exceptional - some of the best. Oysters were perfect and a nice treat. Brussels sprouts were superb. The deep fried sweet potatoes were unusually good but only half were cooked properly with the other being moderately raw. The Wine selection was excellent. Crème brûlée was ok as the chef got carried away with an idea of rum soak raisins that were absolutely mushy and unappetizing which took one far away from one's own vision of the perfect crème brûlée.

THE REQUEST: We specifically reiterated twice that we wanted the steak well seared and medium rare to medium. No glistening red center - truly a warm pink at least. It was professionally repeated back to us.

KITCHEN FAILURE: Before the bisque came out, we were told of a computer glitch in the kitchen and that the lobster tail was already being broiled. This is not the choice of preparation we had chosen. No big deal. It was fine and a bit too well done as expected when broiled. 1st kitchen failure.

The second failure is extremely unfortunate as the steak came out beautifully sliced off the bone but absolutely raw with glistening red meat over 80% of the cut and the fat marbling was under cooked.

We immediately returned the steak ($150) to the kitchen. The steak came back quickly and was again not even close to a medium to medium rare. We were told that the kitchen lights were different that the dinning room which created a visual issue for someone back there. Really?? Come on, Chef!

Personally, I can and do often cook prime, well aged beef. This Being a very special occasion we wanted to treat ourselves by not having to cook nor create a scene at the restaurant. The temperature of the steak is the Patron's Choice - period! If the chef serves it the way he wants to then do not ask what we prefer.

If this was a chef's creative specialty dish, then I wouldn't ask to substitute nor ask for a modification; however, this was a fine steak and IT should have been served right the first time. I don't want a sliced steak to be re-fired as it will not rest the same at all. We allowed that concession and the steak came back out as literally the worst steak that we have ever had in a Fine Restaurant. We choked through what we could and left the absolute raw meat and fat that was left on the plate. Their knife could not even cut through the slimy red, grisly meat.

We didn't bring our phone/camera but wished we had. So no pictures but no phone interruptions . Please look to Aleks G review on Yelp to see a similar pic. Our steak looked worse.

The total bill came to $393, of which we included a tip $80. We were not going to penalize the staff. But someone should have never let this steak reach our table and surely not the way it was presented the final time.

The restaurant used to be Parker's Steakhouse which consistently exceeded our expectations. Moved back to the area and wanted to try Bridgeman's for what we truly expected to be an awesome experience. Totally a disappointment and a waste of hard earned money. Do stay at the attached historic Reed House for the weekend. It...

We set reservations a week or more in advance, we heard great things about this establishment. We are mainstays at Perry's, Ruth Chris and Flemings in the Birmingham area so we anticipated that we would get the same type of experience at Bridgemans chophouse.

We arrived and we're geered by a nice staff, seated and had pretty good service from the wait staff. Ordered drinks, margaritas very reasonable priced for an upscale establishment and tastes very good. Had mussels over a wine sauce as an appetizer and that was delicious as well. The atmosphere in the restaurant was also pretty good with exception of a drink couple cursing like sailors a few table over.. that's not the reason for the rating. We ordered our main course .. the wife ordered filet, shrimp and chimichurri sauce with mashed potatoes... I ordered the seafood tower being I don't eat steak( yeah I know why go to a steakhouse.. she eats steak!). The seafood tower left a little to be desired.. it came with about 10 slight smaller than large shrimp , already peeled which made them kind of rubbery.. Perry's is the only restaurant that have figured out the chilled shrimp.. they have excellent price per shrimp and they are "baby arm" sized and still have the shell on.. which prevents them from getting rubbery. Back to the tower.. also had a lobster tail cut in half ad a few small crab legs and some crab salad in a bowl.. the tower seemed as if it had been stored in the the fridge vs being freshly made.. it was very hard getting the lobster tail meat out of the shell without eating like a savage.. I gave up on the crab legs.. way to small and we tried the crab salad.. it didn't really taste like crab salad.. that seafood tower definitely wasn't Worth $80( was supposed to feed two people). They should redesign the tower.

Now here's the major issue wife and I had, we hadn't eaten all day.. we relaxed in the hotel, reservations were at 7pm.. around 11pm the wife stated she didn't feel well, I felt fine. We shared the meals we both had with the exception of steak! He got very ill later that night until the early morning. We figured something must have been going on with the steak dinner. I had the shrimp she had on her plate, they were grilled and she had stuff off the seafood tower I had.. process of elimination leaves the filet. Even without the steak incident, if I had the Birmingham area staples I mentioned earlier within the same area as Bridgemans chophouse.. chophouse would be my last choice.

We spend a total of $343.87 and wife probably got food poisoning from that...

There is never an excuse for bad service. I had been so excited to have a nice meal in a white tablecloth restaurant, but it was ruined by our extremely rude server.

We made a later reservation at 8:30, but first had a drink at the hotel bar. As the bartender took a long time, I came over to the restaurant to ask about bringing our drinks over and finishing them there, or pushing our reservation. The host said it was no problem and to just come over when we were finished. We sat down at the same time as another table, and there were still 4-5 tables seated while we ate.

However, once seated, our server made it abundantly clear that we were late, the kitchen would be closing soon, and then rushed us along the entire time. When we ordered a bottle of wine, the first thing he said was that we could take it with us if we didn't finish it. Given all of the other comments pushing us out, we knew what he meant.

It got so bad that at the end of our meal, that the server came over and told us that they were about to SWEEP UNDER US. We still had an entirely full glass of wine. For a $200 meal, this was an obscene comment. If it was too late for us to enjoy our meal properly, they should have never seated us. I had ensured that we signed the credit card paper, so that the server could close out that portion, as I've been a server and am sensitive to these things. We took our glass of wine and sat in the hotel lobby with it.

While I don't even care to extensively comment on the food because it felt almost irrelevant, the Chilean sea bass was entirely undercooked and mushy. We wanted to send it back, but were afraid the server would make a salty comment. We just wanted to get the hell out of there, so we left it unfinished. What a waste.

Our final takeaway -- as there was still a full table of men yucking it up when we scurried out -- is that had we not been two women, we would have never been treated this way. I cannot imagine one of the gentlemen at the neighboring table with his glass of scotch being told that they were going to sweep under him and that he can take his drink...