Blackstones Grille — Restaurant in Fairfield

Reading the other reviews about Blackstones, most indicate a quality meal and service. I can agree that the meals can be very good depending on what you order. I've been a handful of times because this is my aunt's favorite place for a special dinner and she likes to take me when I'm in town. The filet is fantastic. Great quality, preparation and spicing. The other steaks I've had are prepared well enough but the quality of the beef does not match the price on them. The sides are generally prepared well and large quantities. The atmosphere is what you'd expect for a higher end steakhouse - dark lighting, heavy furniture.

The reason for the 3 star is the service. The waiters are attentive for the most part. And since many have been there a long time they know the menu. The issue is the attitude and approach. Only one waiting in the times I've been there is engaging. He is engaging even when not serving our table. The others are generally less engaging and friendly than what I normally experience at Outback type of restaurants let alone Shula's, Flemmings, etc. When you're paying $100 a person without any alcohol the service should be mind blowing amazing. The last encounter is prompting me to write this review because of how an error in the bill was handled. The waiter was processing 2 tables and mixed up the tabs and put a lesser amount on my aunt's credit card. He was lucky that we wound up talking a bit more and were still at the table when he discovered this. No problem - people make mistakes. But then he made his second mistake. Instead of just ringing up the difference between the tabs, the voided the first one and rung up another. While my aunt is not charged for the first bill, it does hit her credit for a few days. As a woman in retirement she is managing her budget tightly. Okay, this is the norm when someone decides they don't want an item they just purchased but since he made the mistake in the first place he should have considered this. When I asked why he didn't just bring out a check for the differential and why it was better for her that way he argued with me for 5 minutes that it was no big deal. His argument was the pending credit hold would be removed in a few days. This man knows nothing about my aunts credit situation and harped on the fact that she would not be charged. He even wanted to argue that it would not have any impact on her at all. We asked for the manager after becoming completely frustrated with the arrogance of the waiter. The manager was nice enough when he engaged but also then started to argue the same points as the waiter. We didn't expect the difference to be comped or any other resolution except for the staff to acknowledge that their second mistake of the night was not as clear cut "no problem" as they made it out to be. Given that my aunt is an every other month regular there, how about comping the difference? What if we had left - were they going to just adjust the bill and run it though without her knowing? While the service has been adequate to get a meal onto the table in the past, this event left an incredibly bad taste in our mouth wiping out the taste of the well prepared filet we had. Just incredibly disappointing. My aunt will be back for sure given her love of the restaurant but for the money, I'm hoping that she see's an uptick in the quality of service to match that of other high end...

Reservation 8:00 for 3 arrived at 6:30 wife waited in line to put in our name. She was next in line, but the male host started speaking to the next couple standing behind her. The couple said that she was there first. The host turns to say hi to some people. He then goes back to the couple and disregards my wife... meanwhile I watch. I interrupt and said we are here for an 8:00 reservation and going to the bar for drinks. I responded to an opentable text. I replied if a table opens up will take it. At 7:00 bartender apologizes for swearing and having a difficult time as glass trays are in his walk way. At 7:45 I reminded host that we are still waiting, no pressure as have been at the bar since 6:30 and have been waiting already.. At 8:00 we gather to go to the front. There is an unmade table at the entrance which has been unmade since we arrived at 6:30. They are making it up and placing a table cloth on it. The host says it's my table. There is a cold draft coming in as its next to the host table which is at the front door. So this is how you are treated when making a reservation thru the OpenTable app and how Blackstone treats OpenTable guests or reservations. You would think the amount of time to get a lousy table ready, when it was all along ready since 6:30 unmade. You should of sat us down because you had no intention of giving any other table except for that. I feel that the host was racist. He never came over to ask how our table was. The host already disregarded my whole group, and basically that table was a "I forgot to get you a table" or "i'm gonna get you sucker." At the table, we wanted to order a bottle of Malbec, but the waiter insisted on buying by the glass. Great... whatever. Thought we would be receiving by the glass, but comes back with a bottle. The guys agree that my wife is the wine tester. She pushes her glass towards the waiter as she is the taster, but the waiter still filled my glass which I pushed towards my wife. She was disregarded again, this time by the waiter. Asked if he knew how many Escargot come in the appetizer. He guessed five... but it was actually 6 as I wanted to have everyone in the party to have an equal share. Escargot comes out and we eat it, but something is missing. We did not receive bread as I look at the adjacent tables. I would like to wipe my mouth but there are no napkins. Stopped a passing waiter for napkin and another waitress for bread. At the end of the meal, the Waiter asked what happened to the rest of my tip... it's just $10 dollars. I explained everyone else around you helped as we handed other staff that helped their tip. Our waiter said he would inform the owner of how our night went.. I don't think he would. If he did, great. If he didn't, then this review is for someone to remind him of what happened. With the photo... you can see empty tables. You could estimate that the remaining people were seated around 8:00. I don't recall seeing anymore people seated after 8:00. They would have to pass by my table. Therefore, those were possible tables that we could of been seated at. We spent $1200 for three of us last month.. what happened? I see all...

Honestly a pretty bad steak house.

Service: Service was very slow, my partner and I frequently had to wait 10-15 minutes to even see a glimpse of our server, let alone ask for something. When the bread was brought out I realized I did not have a bread plate, so I had to sit while the bread got cold while I waited to see our waiter so I could ask for one. Warm plates were brought out before our steaks since we got the tomahawk to share, but then we had to wait for approximately 15 minutes for our steak so by the time it got to the table the plates were no longer warm. While I would normally not knock a restaurant for this, if you are going to charge the prices they do, and market yourself as an upscale steak house, you must have top quality service.

Food quality: The steaks are marketed as Prime Dry Aged. Very little dry aged flavor though can be found in the steak, if any at all. Upon asking the server for clarification, he said that the steaks are typically dry aged for only 14 days. Any high end steak house should be dry aging their steaks at least 24 days if it will be on their menu and advertised as dry aged.

Food preparation and presentation: We ordered the steak to be cooked rare to medium rare, we prefer rare, but for a ribeye medium rare is the way to go because of the fat content. What we ended up with was much more on the medium side potentially even pushing in to medium well territory. Any steak house should be able to cook steaks to a desired level of doneness very easily. The people sitting at the next table over had the opposite problem, they ordered theirs medium, and instead ended up with what could be classified as blue rare. It seems as though consistency was a problem because I saw a large number of steaks come out of the kitchen and promptly get taken right back to the kitchen by the wait staff.

Atmosphere: There is no reason to pack the tables next to eachother so closely when you are not an actual NYC steakhouse working with 1/4 of the floor space. It felt very cramped where we were sitting.

Other: Parking was plentiful which is nice.

Closing thoughts: Was it the worst restaurant I have ever been to? No. Was it the worst steak house I have ever been to, certainly yes. They should take a step back and determine where the bottleneck for quality service and food is. Either better/more cook staff must be hired, better servers must be brought in, or the number of tables must be noticeably reduced. Potentially the real solution is a...