Sullivan's Steakhouse — Restaurant in Detroit

I’ll start this review by saying Sullivans was highly anticipated and somewhere I had been excited to try since it opened, and I finally got the chance to go… here’s the experience:

Last night myself and a group of friends (6 in total) finally went. When we got there we tried to valet the car and were met with valet telling us that we could only valet if we were staying at the hotel. Ok, that’s fine, street parking I went. In the meantime, my friends went in to secure our table, 6:30pm reservation. I finally found street parking about 10/15 minute later, only to walk in and see my friends waiting at the front to be seated. After about another 5 minutes we finally got seated, 15 minutes after our reservation (note- the dining room was 1/4 full so not sure what the wait was for?).

Our server comes over and is explaining menu and drinks, asks us if we want still or sparkling, we order bottles of water and they bring one, said the other bottle would be coming. In the meantime, the waiter comes back over to take our appetizer and drink orders, we all order drinks, two of the drinks were Aperol Spritz’s- he has no idea what this is, that’s fine, he said the bartender would know. 20/30 minutes goes by and our apps come out… still no drinks… still no water. We ordered shrimp, egg rolls, Wellington bites, and oysters. Apps were decent aside from the shrimp, which was dry and tasted like it had sat out for quite awhile. About this time our water comes out and the gentleman apologizes and said he had to search in the basement for more bottles of water… lol, what??

Another 5/10 minutes go by and we ask for drinks, which our server says they are coming. After another 5 minutes our drinks arrive, everyone’s correct aside from the aperol spritz, these were just two straight shots of aperol (lol) no champagne or soda. We ask them to remake them, which in turn takes another 10/15 minutes. This time the manager comes over with our drinks and I expressed our concerns thus far. Joey (the manager) apologized and assured us that he would make sure the rest of our time was great.

We ordered our entrees with no issues except our server was a little confused. When I ordered my steak he kept asking me what side I wanted with the steak. He was under the impression that a side came with my entree, which is untrue and all sides are separate. In which, I had to correct him. Our entree came out fine, nothing special by any means… but ok. At this point we asked to order another drink and our server responded to us with a questionable “y’all want to order more drinks?” Before telling us he would have to come back to take drink orders again. It almost felt as if our server had not only never worked in the restaurant business before, but had never been out to dinner before.

Joey (the manager) came up to us towards the end of our dinner and told us he would bring someone over to clear off our table, which the finished dishes sat on for probably 20 minutes and that he was going to bring us out a dessert spread as an apology for the unacceptable dinner. 4 desserts were brought out, all were just ‘ok’, nothing spectacular but we appreciated the gesture.

When the bill arrived It was approximately $1,300 for 6 of us. My friend generously went to pay the bill but looked at the bill before paying. She noticed that the desserts that were supposed to be “comped” were charged on the bill, and 5 desserts were charged, we only got 4 to our table lol. We called the waiter over and he was going to go get Joey because he was never told to comp anything. We waited about 10 minutes and another manager came over because Joey was “in the back cooking” and he said he would take care of it. About 5/10 minutes later the waiter brings the bill back to us, still wrong. We tell him there was still charges in there that Joey said were comped and he proceeds to argue with us that the bill is correct. We ask to go get the manager again and the manager comes over apologizing and said he would fix the bill, which he does end up doing.

Worst dining...

We had a 8pm reservation Saturday April 6 for seven people on what was I consider a standard Saturday evening in Detroit. We approached the concierge desk about 7:50pm with only four of the seven from our party. They asked that we waited for one-two more people to arrive before being sat to help improve our experience. We ended up waited for all seven of us to arrive and were sat about 8:03pm. We were sat at a round table in the middle of the resturant and sat waiting patiently for a server or anyone for that matter to come greet us for 20min!! We finally stoped another server to ask her who our server was and if she could send someone over with at-least water. The serves snapped back with you have the best server but she's busy I'll bring you some bread!! BREAD we just wanted water smh. Finally about 25 minutes of sitting a gentleman came over (no introduction) poured some water, explained the drink menu and wine list to only say he was the sommelier and our server would be over to get our drink order..... Almost 30 mins now they brought bread out and the sommelier returned to get our drink order...Finally 45 min in we have cocktails and our server showed up for the first time (I didn't get her name because she didn't tell it to us) so we quickly placed our appetizer order and she came back within mins so we placed our entree order as well (concerned how long things were taking)..... Appetizers were pretty quick...Ruben egg roll was okay, oysters were okay, breaded cauliflower let's just say we couldn't find the cauliflower as we were eating fried breading (highly recommend not trying this one). 1 hour 15min in we flagged down the sommelier to get another round of drinks in anticipation of our meal those took 10 min to get, we were happy things were moving quicker.... Salads arrived drenched in dressing and uneatable so we picked at them, one of us ordered soup it never came and nobody came back to check on us so we couldn't question where it was... Now we are at 2 hours in salad plates removed, we ordered a bottle of wine and were told entrees were on their way out. Entrees arrive 1 filet (ordered medium rare arrived Well done) Ribeye (uneatable "hard as a rock") Filet Oscar Style (Over cooked, three slivers of what we think was crab and no sauce) Sea Bass (still cold in center "maybe even frozen still") Crab cakes (freezing cold) Parmesan Fries (cold and Saugy)!! I could keep going but you get the idea, so the sommelier came over to ask how things were and I asked for the manager and when I saw his face I realized he was the manager too!!! I couldn't believe he let the two hours happen like he did knowing he was the MANAGER!!! We ended up paying for everything up to our entrees we couldn't eat because they were HORRIBLE!! The manager/sommelier brought out our check, we paid for cocktails, apps, salads and soup (soup we never received) and LEFT. The manger/sommelier invited us back and said he could comp a drink and an app if we gave them another chance and apologized!!

TAKEAWAY: We will NEVER be back and I HIGHLY suggest they shut down ASAP regroup, restaff, and restart if they truly want to make ago of staying in Detroit!!

SIDE NOTE: If you are visiting Detroit or want to try a PREMIER STEAKHOUSE in Detroit do yourself a favor and try Prime+Propper it's right around the corner and a true 5⭐️...

I never thought that I would be degraded in such a manner in my life. Yesterday (11-19-2024) was my birthday and decided to try somewhere that I've never been for a solo lunch date. I entered around 1:40 p.m., was greeted properly and opted to sit at the bar. The ambiance was nice and there were only a few customers. I was greeted by the bar waiter who introduced himself as "Mark." I ordered a margarita, calamari, oyster rockerfellas, mac-n-cheese, French onion soup, and key lime pie. Mark came back to tell me that they had no oysters, which was fine. The food came out in a timely manner (I took pictures to share with family and friends); the drink, calamari and soup were awesome...the mac very dry and mediocre. Mark then came back with the key lime pie and lit the candle...I was excited, closed my eyes, said my prayers and wish, blew out the candle (and took a picture, again to share with my family and friends), then took a bite...tasted like it really would've been delicious had it not had a metallic undertone.

As I'm going through my pictures I am appalled by what I see...."Nappy Birthday"!!!!!! Are you serious? On my birthday????? I turned to the stranger sitting next to me, show her the picture, and ask her what does she see... she said "Nappy Birthday!!! OMG, I would sue!...So, I called Mark over, showed him the picture and asked the same thing....he BURSTED OUT LAUGHING and said "omg, I didn't even notice that"...but what's funny about it??? He asked to take my phone back to the kitchen to show them and I agreed. He returned, still laughing and said "they're not going to charge you for the dessert and they said that the letter thing is broken and they have to buy another one"...which makes no sense to me, because "Happy" comes before "Birthday" and the "H" was perfectly defined and visible in the "Birthday." Anyways, a waitress came over and asked what happened...I showed her and SHE BURSTED OUT LAUGHING AS WELL!!! She said, " wow, I was not expecting that" and I replied "neither was I, but here we are, ESPECIALLY ON MY BIRTHDAY." Everytime they all walked to the back, I could hear laughing and it made me feel some type of way. I did not want to cause a scene, so I asked for a box and bag, paid, left a tip (it wasn't his fault, although he was very insensitive to the event), and I left.

I was so angry, and the more I talked to others about it the more hurt I became. No one came to apologize, the manager never came, my waiter did not advocate on my behalf for the blatant racism, everyone just laughed. I have never been so humiliated in my life...I am looking for corporate contact information to escalate this situation......because is this how you treat people (and on their birthday...