The Vault Restaurant & Cocktail Lounge — Restaurant in Dubuque

We were in town for an event and wanted to go to a nicer restaurant for dinner. We found The Vault and the menu looked great so that’s where we went. It’s a cool looking space, the bar especially. We ordered the tenderloin bites - medium rare and they were perfect. The two sauces that come with are both good. The horseradish sauce is mild so anyone could handle it. If there were an option to have fresh grated horseradish to spice it up, my husband would have loved that. He ordered the apple bourbon pork chops, salad and baby potatoes. I had the scallops in buerre blanc sauce. The good: The pork chops were outstanding! The flavor, perfectly cooked and plentiful. The salad is huge for a dinner salad and comes with plenty of items on it. The potatoes could have been amazing but they were roasted simply with no butter or anything. They should at least brush with melted butter, salt and pepper before serving and ask if anyone wants our cream. The scallops were large, perfectly cooked and there were 6 or7 of them. The sauce was bland and runny - not the buerre blanc that I’m used to. I added salt and pepper to the sauce and then it was much better. Scallops were great. I had the baby potatoes and a salad as well. The bad: They need to set their tables. It appeared as if they had plenty of staff standing around so can’t see that this should be a problem. The silverware they have is wrapped in a paper napkin like at a deli or cheap lunch spot - it’s super cheap silverware that hurts your hands when you cut with the fork. Bad optics. A white tablecloth, set silverware, cloth napkins and water glasses would make this restaurant look much nicer. And they should buy some nice silverware that feels good in the hand. The lighting over the bar is a warm amber color. The lighting along the wall is bright white LED. I’d use the same warm amber lightbulb on the wall lights, it’ll still be plenty of light, it’ll just feel better to the people there. LED lighting is bad enough, at least warm it up. Our server was very friendly. The food came out fast. A little too fast, unfortunately. We had adapt two bites of the tenderloin bites and our salads appeared. We went back and forth between the bites and the salad and suddenly our entrees appeared! The person that brought out the entrees didn’t even blink at the fact that we had a table full of unfinished, partially eaten food. We felt rushed. The kitchen needs to time their output better and servers should be aware as well. Let us get to the end of the appetizer(s) before bringing the salad. A salad this big is going to take some time to eat. When it looks like we are getting to the end of the salad, bring the entree. We also ordered the red velvet cake and the cake was really dry - bummer as it was a $7 slice of cake! We’d eat here again, for sure, because the food is outstanding. Servers and staff are friendly. A few minor improvements and this could be one of the best restaurants downtown. Get the pork...

CALL don’t book online! This is not a review of their food which we would have loved the opportunity to try, but instead a comment on our experience waiting/being strung on for 45 minutes to be seated for a RESERVATION.

We made an online reservation at The Vault for 6:15PM on NYE. We arrived just before, and were one of three couples asked to wait an unknown amount of time. No big deal, we had reservations, it seemed likely we would be seated soon. After ten minutes we sat and ordered drinks at the bar. Over the next 30 minutes only one of the couples was seated, and we watched a group of six people grow to a rush of 30 anxiously waiting customers that can only be explained by a shared expectation of being seated for a 6:00-7:00 reservation. Why else would anyone anxiously await an extended and unknown amount of time packed like a sardine in a non existent standing room only waiting area for all seated customers and staff of the restaurant to see? Awkward! For all, especially those seated at tables in the front. The host was unable to estimate the wait the couple times we asked, and we weren’t asked to sit at our table until almost 7, by that point we’d hedged our bets with a 7:30 reservation at L.May, which we much preferred over eating in front of an angry mob. We gave our bar seats to another couple awaiting a reservation, and our 4 person table to a nice family of 5 who came in after us, and like us (and probably the 30 others visibly anxious for all to see awaiting their table) were unfortunately deceived by a likely broken online reservation system into thinking there was availability on NYE. We left, we received no explanation, saw no engagement from management with the crowd, just a sincerely apologetic host. Not to excuse the management, as we can’t imagine it was intentional, but The Vault NEEDS to fix that online reservation system to avoid that overbooking fiasco from happening again, and NEEDS to be more proactive and engaging with the patrons entering so they can find alternative ways to celebrate the year’s end. An experienced and proactive host could have mitigated a lot of the frustration apologetically explaining to patrons up front that they overbooked, there would be a wait, that their reservations had become a first come first serve basis, and waiting time was 40 minutes. To find out after 40 minutes past our reservation time is unacceptable. 5-10 minutes on a reservation would have been fine, but this was ridiculous. We will call next time, but in a town with so many options for nice places to eat out, there likely won’t be...

We were excited to try this place, but we were not impressed by this restaurant for what we paid. My husbands steak was undercooked and undersalted and the shrimp with it was dry. My stuffed chicken was also underseasoned and was basically just stuffed with cream cheese that wasnt melted and the vegetables on the side were dry and kind of bland. We both chose mashed potatoes with our meals and oddly they came in their own separate dish in what looked like a soup bowl....why wasnt this on the same plate? We also ordered the crab mushroom appetizer and we were confused when it arrived because it was in the form of 4 fried balls. Not a fan of this because why do stuffed mushrooms need to be fried? Never seen that done before and didnt make sense. And again not much flavor inside and didnt really taste the crab, the cream filling just took over. On top of the lack of quality in the food, when the salads were brought out, someohow the guy had spilled ranch dressing all over my hand. And my husbands beer took forever to arrive, and we had to ask for it twice. We definitely...