Shula's Steak House — Restaurant in Gainesville

We (a party of 13) made a 7:00 pm. reservation for Wednesday, Sept 6, 2023, to celebrate our son's 13th birthday. We arrived at 7:12 pm, placed our orders at 7:35 pm but still had not received our food by closing time at almost 9 pm. Meanwhile, everyone around us received their food, especially people at the bar (the Hilton Hotel's restaurant in the next room). Our server and our maitre'd attempted numerous times to get the manager (Ben), but he was conveniently not available to speak with us in person. When our son's track coach had to leave and then his sister and her family had to leave, he leaned over to me and whispered "Dad, everyone's leaving! Where's our food?". The fact that it was so late that our guests had to leave and we ended up taking our food home in to-go boxes, made an otherwise special evening into a less than pleasant experience. Our son was visibly saddened by the end of the evening, and as we were getting in the car, he said, "My 13th birthday party sucked." 😢

My family and I are quite dismayed that it would take over two hours to be served. Meanwhile, everyone else is getting their food. Apparently, Wednesday is not the night of the week to visit Shula's because they must only have one cook, and the manager is too afraid to talk to his disgruntled guests. The operation of Shula's Gainesville needs to be fixed. When bar orders are given priority over a reserved party of 13, with a tab of almost $600, that's a disgrace on many levels.

This restaurant is in the University of Florida Hilton, and my wife and I are both alumni of the University of Florida. Therefore, we thought it would be a good choice for a formal outing.

Sadly, we will not be back. We tried to give my son a 'grown-up' experience, and unfortunately, he saw the downside of growing up.

As manager of our local planetarium, I am appalled that such shoddy operation of restaurant logistics is allowed to persist; costing Shula's hundreds of dollars and costing the server a generous gratuity Management never came out to talk to us, and we stayed until 9:50 pm. Please fix this so other people don't have to go through what we...

To properly review this restaurant, I must begin at the beginning. I originally tried Shula's shortly after it opened, wasn't impressed with the quality of food and hadn't been back. I only returned on this past Wednesday to honor a special young man who was celebrating a milestone birthday, 13. We dressed up, came out on a Wednesday, and watched as his initial excitement dissipated because your restaurant provided promise after promise and never delivered. Our party waited so long that guests had to leave and eventually the honoree just wanted the meals boxed up and to go home. Shula's, bad food is one thing, but when you disappoint a child on my watch, that is unforgivable! I will NEVER spend $ to eat in your restaurant again. If you all were struggling with staffing that evening, you could have been honest and thus allowed us to jump in the car and shuttle this young man somewhere close by that had the capacity to properly serve him on his special day. Instead you did broken promise after broken promise until the evening was unable to be salvaged. How despicable. And then you left a poor waitress to come out and bear the burden of apologies and explanations alone. This showed me you you not only struggle as an establishment but as an employer as well. I have a staff of 16 people under my leadership, I would have NEVER sent them out to own a mistake alone. You all truly have much work to do over there. Such a beautiful building that you all are not capitalizing on the atmosphere with poor food and even poorer service. You owe that young man the most sincerest of apologies. You robbed him of a most precious moment. And while disappointments happen in life, that is not a lesson a child should have to learn on his 13th birthday due to the lack of good business etiquette...

Only 3 minor issues that I’ll mention at the end, otherwise a nearly flawless meal. We were staying at the Hilton, so the location was very convenient!

We started with an Old Fashioned with bullet rye. It was very good. Pretty classic.

We both ordered the Wedge Salad. Much more interesting than the classic. The Blue Cheese dressing was outstanding- good blue cheese flavor but more mellow. Instead of bacon bits, the bacon jam was thick and savory, with just a hint of sweetness. The tomato jam was sweet. A few small grape tomatoes (would have loved more) and a large wedge of iceberg. One of the best ever.

We shared the Ribeye. It was 16 ounces and very flavorful. It was perfectly medium rare and lightly seasoned and actually not that much fat.

For sides, we ordered the Brussels sprouts and the sautéed spinach. The Brussels sprouts were well prepared and a bit sweet, but when eaten with the spinach it was actually perfectly paired. The spinach was nice and garlicky.

We were too full for dessert.

The 3 minor flaws. 1) the water was not drinkable. He said it was filtered but something was definitely off. 2) the menu prices were significantly more than the menu on their website. There really isn’t much excuse not to update your website when it changes. 3) I really like bourbon cherries, so I asked for extra on each if the 3 Old Fashioneds. They charged $.50 for EACH cherry! I’ve never been charged for extra cherries, and we weren’t told until presented with the bill. For $18 per drink, I would have expected better from a restaurant like this. Otherwise it...