Ellie's Restaurant & Lounge — Restaurant in Dallas

This review is about checking out Ellie's new fall menu! If you haven't had the pleasure of dining here it is located within the hall arts hotel downtown Dallas. This will be my second review of Ellie's but I loved it and with a new menu, comes a new review. After being seated, we were greeted by our server Chelsea and the food and beverage manager Sydney. They were both extremely helpful in picking out some great starters. We decided on the smoke trout dip, warm focaccia, lamb meatballs, and fire roasted oysters. The smoked trout dip was very nice at first but I thought it needed a little salt or boldness but that was because my first bite did not include the trout row that was sprinkled on top. Make sure your bite has this because it adds the punch of flavor and texture needed. The cracker I felt was a bit too soft to go with the soft dip, but that's just my opinion. Flavor was on point however. Next was the warm focaccia bread served with Olive tapenade. This was amazing! Best focaccia I've ever had! I believe it takes 2 days to prepare this. The tapenade was very good but not even needed, that's how good the focaccia was! I don't eat a lot of bread but could not stop on this must try dish! The lamb meatballs were good sized and much denser than expected but packed with flavor and served with a Moroccan sofrito and mint yogurt. Very nice. Lastly, we tried the fire roasted oysters with tajano butter and charred lemon. They were small but very tasty. My father who is not an oyster fan, ate half the dish! They did have a little spicy kick which I loved. All the starters were incredible but the focaccia stole the show for me! The main entree course consisted of grilled lamb chops with cashew hummus, mint and pomegranate salad, and molasses drizzle. Then we had the grilled pork chop with cardamom scented poached peaches and dried fruits, fennel, and saffron and infused bourbon sauce. We also had the crispy potatoes as a side. The lamb was very good quality and cooked perfectly how I specified. It was incredible with the velvety cashew hummus and crispy potatoes. You cannot go wrong with this choice. The pork chop was cooked perfectly. It was juicy inside and full of flavor. It is on the sweeter side so keep that in mind. Dinner was paired with a bottle of Etude 2019 pinot noir and it was a perfect compliment for the dinner. I hear the Hall's have their own winery but we didn't try them this evening. Of course you cannot have an incredible meal without trying some dessert. We chose the warm bread pudding and chocolate terrine. Both excellent but my winner was the bread pudding with dried fruit, orange zest, chocolate chips, orange liqueur, and topped with Vanilla Ice cream. Not too sweet, which was perfect. The terrine is perfect for those chocolate lovers out there. Our server Chelsea was incredible the entire dining experience she is an A+ server who is very knowledgeable, funny, helpful, and even suggested some other cocktails, which I did order, and they were both incredible. She perfected the pace of the meal and provided stellar service from beginning to end. All in all, I highly recommend Ellie's and trying their fall menu while it's still available. The hotel/restaurant is top-notch and beautiful with all the art. I highly suggest you make reservations and go try for yourself. I can't...

OOOKKK, so I chose to host my husband's 4Tish bday dinner here...the location is ideal as we live in turtle creek so it took us NO time to arrive. We arrived at 730p on a Tuesday, there was maybe 6 people in the restaurant which is unheard of in Dallas but ok, great, we should get great service then right?!! Well, our waiters name was Noah..he was very polite, respectful & attentive. What he didn't do was offer nor mention the chef's special, OR bring ANY FOOD OUT ON TIME!! We sat down at 7:30p, didn't get drinks until after 8p, appetizers until 8:30p, and our dinner didn't show up until 9:25p...ooh and by this time, there's still only 3 parties in the entire restaurant having dinner (we're still the 1st ones) and maybe 8-10 people in the bar area.. When we inquired about the wait, Noah stated, "ooh this is normal bc we don't have a normal FULL kitchen like MOST restaurants"...WAIT, WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?? So this isn't ACTUALLY A REAL RESTAURANT LIKE THE TITLE SAYS, ELLIE'S RESTAURANT & LOUNGE??? he then says "see look around the wall, it's a partial kitchen.." I didn't know what to do or say as the 8 dinner guest that we had invited was flabber-gasted at the response!! Ooh and did I mention, no manager had come to our table (which is located ALLL the way in the back of the restaurant by the bathrooms) at this point which would have definitely happened at Eddie V's, Houstons, Del Friscos, etc. (you get the point) Well to save the night, we just ate, cut the cake & left..the night had been ruined so lets just leave. As we are preparing to do so, I asked Noah if he could take a photo of us in the courtyard 4 steps away from the backdoor we was sat next to and he looked perplexed...I said what's wrong..he said "I can, I just can't go too far from my other table's I'm serving"...I again was bewildered, thinking, Y'all were the one's who sat us in the back 9, like we were teenagers, animals or degenerates who was going to disrupt the ambience of NOBODY since we was the ONLY dinner party here at 7:30p...That was IT..JUST FYI, HE NEVER TOOK OUR PICTURES IN THEIR COURTYARD, THE TABLE BUSBOY DID BECAUSE NOAH DISAPPPEARED TO CATER TO OTHERS AFTER WE PAID A $1000 BILL!! Last Note: My husband asked to speak to/meet the Chef at 9:45p & we was told "he's already left for the night"..but there was still people having dinner in the restaurant..🤷🏾‍♀️😣🤦🏾‍♀️ Low & behold, we go out to dinner weekly, sometimes 2--3 times a week & Ellie's will never see the Russells again..DON'T BELIEVE THE PICTURES ONLINE OR THE REVIEWS..SPEND YOUR MONEY...

Editing this review to say Ashley at Ellie's reached out and kindly helped out by partially refunding our bill. I really appreciate that, thank you.

We booked a table for the Christmas menu, booked via the main website that directed us to OpenTable from the Christmas menu option. I booked a mid afternoon slot, 2.30pm, just a reminder this was me booking from the site for a Christmas meal. I received the standard pre booking experience to confirm I was still attending. On arrival we were seated in the bar, I say seated we were directed to "pick a table" which was surprising as we'd booked a Christmas meal option so I thought we'd be seated at a designated table. Once seated we ordered drinks and then we were asked if we wanted a charcuterie board with drinks which we declined as again it was odd as we had a Christmas meal booked. On further investigating we discovered the Christmas meal wasn't available until 5pm so we had no other option than the bar menu. By this point we'd ordered and had served a bottle of champagne so couldn't leave unless we took the bottle with us. Our Christmas meal was now a bar menu of burger and fries!!!! Ok so I thought I'd messed up, in the time we were in the bar I noticed 4 other couples turned up expecting the same thing, I didn't mess up, we booked something that wasn't available. I felt so sorry for all of us, one couple were clearly there to celebrate a birthday, one were celebrating their 1st Christmas and he tried desperately to find another restaurant that had availability for a Christmas booking. We actually notified staff of what we thought had caused the problem, the link to open table has been set up incorrectly allowing any time booking without notifying when the Christmas menu was available. The staff also notified what appeared to be the restaurant manager during this time and he didn't seem bothered and did nothing to rectify or mollify the problem. When our food came out the server didn't ask us if we wanted any condiments, salt, sauces etc, we had to ask the lady behind the bar as he was nowhere to be seen. What could have been a lovely experience was very disappointing. Thanks for a really underwhelming Christmas meal experience, burgers were not what we wanted for a Christmas meal, I could have gone to McDonald's for that. Next time think about what your website booking links to, you potentially ruined peoples...