Claremont Neighborhood Grill — Restaurant in Dallas

Our party stopped in 08/29/2025 for happy hour. We ordered the burger, oysters, as well as drinks.

The burger was simple, topped with their special sauce and very delicious.

The oysters were on the small side but very fresh, salty like the ocean, and along with the smokey cocktail sauce, my wife and I really enjoyed these!

As for the drinks. Fresh ingredients and good pours. No complaints!

Where this restaurant is lacking was the service, which really just came down to our server in particular. I won’t provide her name, as this was my only time stopping in and it may have been an off day for her.

My wife and I arrived at 5pm with 1 hour left on the happy hour menu. The bar was full so the hostess seated us at a table. Our server greeted us warmly but as she realized we had been seated, only to order from the happy hour menu, her attitude changed. Don’t get me wrong, she continued to check in with a smile, but the body tends to say more then what our lips are able to.

After placing our order, we asked to hold on to a menu as one of the members of our party was en route. She left us with the regular menu and took away the happy hour menu, stating that we would no longer have time to order from it. The time was 5:40 with 20 minutes left. I don’t know about you but that’s plenty of time for at least 2 margaritas for me! From that moment on, she chatted it up with the surrounding tables, but did not return to take another order until 6:01.

No worries though. When we realized she was intentionally not returning, we asked a Busser to grab a server. A gentlemen came to our table at 5:58 and was super cool. Allowed us to put in another order of oysters as well as a few more rounds before time was up.

By the time our regular server came back, it was just in time to drop the check.

Within 5 minutes of dropping it at the table, As I still had the check sitting in front of me, she stopped by, reached over the table grabbed it, and walked off. This is server speak for “it’s time for you to leave my table”.

Both myself and my wife have worked in fine dinning (I’m not saying this is a fine dining establishment but it’s not Applebees either) for years and are very much aware of certain servers tendencies to prejudge, especially during happy hour. But when it comes to down to it, those specials are offered to put butts in seats during times that they normally wouldn’t. It was the only reason we came, when we otherwise wouldn’t.

We still spent over 200 in the hour and a half we were there and had no intentions of holding up her table long, knowing that the dinner crowd would be arriving shortly. We were not rude and very pleasant and tipped accordingly. As I said, this may have been an off day for her and I could have read this situation wrong, but servers who are disinterested and passive aggressive based upon their own prejudgment of the guest is a big pet peeve of mine in the service industry.

Once again, the food and the drinks were very good. The hostess, busser, and the server with the Mohawk who took our last order were excellent!

We will definitely give this place another shot, during happy hour, and see if the service is up to par to add this to our...

Let's start with the food is good and the bar staff is great.

Here's where management needs to get it together. You're a neighborhood restaurant, not out for a Michelin star...which will come in later.

To your customers, the only thing more irritating than the person at a host stand asking 'is your entire party here' is seeing open seats at a bar and being told you have to get on a list. BARS ARE FOR OPEN SEATING. Houston's - I mean Hillstone is the only other place I've seen with the attitude to take up this policy. Which had me drop my visit count from ~25 visits a year to zero.

If you're going to have this moronic policy, you should be on the ball and seat quickly...nope...the staff had open seats for 13 minutes before 'allowing' us to sit down...and yes, I counted. I did this because, not having a seat gave me the free time to catalogue their lack of competence.

The deviled eggs are spectacular...I mean amazing, but most of the other food is just average for what I would expect at the price point...not earth shaking, just what I would expect.

Oh oh oh...I even asked about this policy and managements glib response was 'well...we noticed that this is how some Michelin star restaurants handle bar seating. My friend, I've been to Michelin Star restaurants and you are NOT that. Stay in your lane, be the best version of what you are and embrace that neighbor restaurants live and die by customers who come in and drop $150 on any...

Somewhat dowdy and in need of a renovation as far as the interior. Bartenders are super friendly. Food is - not to my liking.

I was excited to see the crispy artichoke appetizer thinking they would be delicious bite sized artichoke hearts with a tasty dipping sauce. As you can see by the pic they looked like something out of a horror movie. (Or frogs legs?) I literally didn’t know what I was being served until I realized it was a baby artichoke with most (not all) of the tough leaves removed. It wasn’t crispy or seasoned. It was chewy and stringy. And the lemon ricotta and herb pesto were not complimentary.

A couple next to me got the cheeseburger and to say it looked plain would be an understatement. I decided to try one more thing and that was the tortilla soup (being a connoisseur of tortilla soup) and what came out was the thickest, darkest and quite frankly strongest tortilla soup I’ve ver had. There was a heaping of stringy chicken, some fresh avocado, a sprinkle of cheese and tortilla chips. The soup was strong and almost had a BBQ sauce like taste in addition to the very thick consistency.

A woman two seats from me ordered the salmon and I could smell the fishy smell 😩. Thank heaven I didn’t order that. I love FRESH seafood but strong stinky fish makes me gag.

I guess the Claremont Grill isn’t my cup of tea, but you don’t know if you will like a restaurant...