1700° Steakhouse — Restaurant in El Paso

My wife and I celebrated our wedding anniversary here and what an experience it was. Nestled inside the newly refurbished Paso del Norte Hotel, this intimate steakhouse is not for the meal-on-budget night out. Nonetheless, you get the full experience. The hostess was quite friendly, we were seated right away - I had made a reservation ahead of time. Our waiter was beyond knowledge of the history of the restaurant's location, the building, El Paso history, and the food and beverage selections and pairings.

I had 2 of their Oaxaca Old Fashioned because it was the smoothest Old Fashioned I've ever tasted. We had the carpaccio and the onion soup as appetizers - both delicious and can be shared amongst two people though each will get a few bites. A broad basket is brought to the table where you can choose from cibatta bread, jalapeño corn bread, wheat dinner roll, dinner roll, and others. You also get butter amd an olive spread with the bread.

For the entre, my wife had the 26oz porterhouse - well done (I'm sorry) with the potato gratine on the side. I decided to go big and ordered the A5 Japanese Wagyu with a side of German Butterball potatoes. Prior to the entree arriving, the waiter comes and has you select your weapon! - your steak knive. The meal is served in a thick wooden cutting board - fitting for a steakhouse. Both our meals where DELICIOUS, but I will add that the A5 is an experience. The beef just melts in your mouth!

Knowing that is was our anniversary, the kitchen sent out a special dessert with a chocolate plaque of dark chocolate that read, Happy Anniversary. It was a great touch, classy.

Though the bill, with a generous tip, was close to $450; you may opt for a less pricy cut of meat amd not endulge your beverage or meat fantasies as I did. Highly recommend this restaurant and remind you that it is not a cheap (in any meaning of the word) restaurant, but damn is it worth it!

FUN FACT: You can park in the hotel's parking lot - located under the hotel - and have your ticker validated...

I guess I have to preface this by saying I'm probably just not the restaurants preferred customer.

Because my wife works in the medical field and I work in the restaurant industry we never get holidays off. That being said I reached out and asked if they could still do the valentines day accommodations for us on Sunday (two days after valentines day).

They confirmed that we would have access to the valentines day menu and they would decorate the table for us with flowers. Well, they definitely offered the $250+ steak that wasn't an issue for them, but they seated us at a table in the far back corner in a high traffic area seemingly to hide us from the preferred customers with no other accommodations. Between the price of the non wagyu steak and not being interested in foie Gras, and the only valentines day accommodations being we get to over pay, we decided to eat off the regular menu.

The waiter was friendly and did his job well enough but for a meal being $250 plus tip. I don't think this place offers the hospitality that should come from a restaurant at this caliber.

The wine was great, I ordered a glass of the malbec they have on their menu (just one) immediately I could tell it wasn't a malbec it was a red blend, which don't get me wrong was a winner, my wife liked it and we bought a bottle, but again I expect more from a restaurant that expects so much from their customers.

The restaurants obviously wants pretentious rich people in suits that don't know about food and wine. If you're that type. I'd highly recommend it, if not I'd probably recommend somewhere a bit more hospitable in the same area. Ambar, Cassanova, or if you want a place specifically for wine maybe mesa street grill.

To the owner/operators I would suggest the book "unreasonable...

I had very high hopes for this place. I made reservations, showed up early and had a drink at the beautiful bar outside the restaurant. We were sat and were greeted minutes after we were sat. Were were also the 1st table sat where the staff outnumbered the patrons 3 to 1. It must have been a slow night because thought our while meal there were no more then 4 people sat. The waiter was nice but unfortunately not very knowledgeable about steps of service or indeed the menu he is supposed to know. I asked about specials, he did not know and had to walk back tobyhe kitchen to tell me what soup they made that day. We stumbled along a late bread service. There was some presentation of knives to choose from for the steak. All of them had not seen a stone in ages. Dull is not the word. I ordered a sauce au poured, or Of pepper. What was brought had no pepper of any kind. When I brought it to waiters attention he went to the kitchen and came back with an equally bad showing. Maybe it was an off night, or new kitchen staff, or perhaps fine dining does not exist in el paso. Save your money....