City Cellars — Restaurant in Houston

Unfortunately, this was extremely disappointing. My friends and I found it searching for a brunch place that was participating in HRW (Houston Restaurant Weeks). I reserved our table on Resy and was shocked that they required my credit card and would have charged me $25 if I did not show up and did not cancel at least 4 hours in advance. I acquiesced, and called the next day and discussed seating for our table. I asked for indoors, and they told me they were fully booked indoors but would make sure we were comfy on the patio next to the outdoor AC units. We showed up a little early, and the place was half full. No one was seated on the patio. There was a DJ spinning right by the hostess. The hostess could not find my reservation, and the music was so loud, we had to yell at each other to hear. She wanted me to find my reservation info while a line of people walking in built up at the door. Finally, the hostess decided to give us a table that was empty. My friends and I had been talking about bloody Mary’s all week long, and were very excited to try them here because they were a main drink on the menu. When James took our drink order, we tried to order the Bloody Mary’s but they had been 86’d. God bless James, our server, he was so sweet, and tried to Double check with the bartender to make sure that there wasn’t any bloody Mary mix, however, it was futile. James was wonderful-very personable, you could tell he’s a consummate professional. So here’s where the bloody Mary mix is so important: when you go on Google it says “brunch place”. How in the world can you call yourself a brunch place and not have bloody Mary mix for Sunday afternoon brunch in Houston? We were ordering off of the HRW menu, (which for some reason we were told when we made the reservation that if one person at the table was ordering off that menu everyone HAD to which I found very weird). We were deciding on what we wanted to eat and James let us know that they were out of two of the four. He did give us the option to choose any one of the appetizers on the regular menu instead of the items on the HRW menu but the problem with that is there was only about five or six items on the whole appetizer menu and two of them were the ones that were sold out. So the choices were very limited. We ordered an appetizer for the table before we ordered off of the HRW menu and we chose the calamari. When it came out it was on this tiny little plate -there was maybe seven or eight little rings of calamari and one squid on the whole plate. We paid the full price for this dish and did not get the full regular portion. We got the HRW portion. But the worst part about it was it didn’t come with any lemon and the breading on it was made with cornmeal. Cornmeal breading is the stuff that you use when you fry catfish, you definitely don’t use that on calamari! We were told that the sauce it was served with was remoulade but I don’t think it was I think it was actually aïoli and it didn’t taste very good. We got bacon wrapped scallops for our HRW appetizer, and the bacon wasn’t cooked as well as I was expecting from the picture on their menu. Also, all items were missing their micro green garnishes. My friend ordered the fried green tomatoes and they were good, but again, it had that cornmeal breading. Entrees were crab cakes Benedict, lobster omelette and steak & eggs. My friend enjoyed his steak and eggs, however my other friend realized that her lobster omelette had no lobster in it at all. Just three tiny pieces of crawfish, and some asparagus bottoms inside. Her potatoes were WAY over seasoned also. They gave her steak and eggs as a replacement, and the eggs were so salty I spit them out when I tasted them. My crab cakes were ok-just run of the mill, nothing special-had quite a few bites w/ shell. My potatoes were good, the sauce under the scallops was good, and the bacon was great. Overall though it was pretty terrible. Supply chain issues aside, they just were NOT prepared for Sunday brunch on a...

What does $7 buy you here? A bad taste in the mouth.

I made a patio reservation for my wife and I to have brunch at City Cellars at 12:30 today. We were running early and arrived almost 30 minutes before our reservation. After a very brief wait, we were shown to our “table’, and told that the host would be right back with some water for us; here’s where the issues began. Our “table” was, in fact, just some bench seating in the corner of the patio. No table, not even a coffee table or end table to put drinks on. This area was also getting full midday sun; my poor fair-skinned wife was getting cooked to a crisp. We waited at least 10 minutes for water to be brought out, with no sign of our waiter. He finally appears at the table next to ours (seated just prior to us), and proceeds to fumble his way through taking their order. They had to repeat it so many times, I can still remember what each of them ordered (he asked for the fried green tomatoes and the lobster omelet - no bacon - and she had the seafood bake and ‘the stallion’). He really appeared out of his depth. In the meantime, the other table near us on the patio (this one in the shade) cleared out, so when we finally got some attention, I asked politely if we could move to it, to spare my wife. The host then told me that they had another reservation coming in about 15 minutes, and they were going to be seated there. Wait, what? I have a reservation too, and I’m already here. You are telling me you can’t move us for someone that hasn’t arrived? So the host says they’ll see what they can do; 5 minutes later they come back and offer to move us inside. I reserved for the patio because dining-in is not in my risk profile at this time. We told them that wasn’t going to work for us, and they said there was nothing else they could do. We decided at that point it was time to leave. We were there a total of 30 minutes, got served a glass of water each, and paid $7 for parking for the privilege of the experience.

On its own, the slow/poor quality of the service would have been forgivable; short-staffing is a thing, and sometimes places are just busy. But seating people with a reservation at a spot that’s not even a table? And then treating them like they don’t matter? That’s an abject customer service failure, and the sort of thing that will get me to not only take my money elsewhere, but encourage others to do so as well. If I could have given them zero stars,...

I can't speak to the food, but I can say the service was awful enough that I won't ever be returning.

My partner is immunocompromised, so we haven't been eating out much. We were so excited that Houston Restaurant Weeks organized listings so we could search for locations with patio seating. We scoured brunch menus and planned day one with such anticipation.

We reserved a table in advance and masked up to speak with the host. After a few minutes a host came out to seat someone else and noted that they had us seated at the corner "booth," and gestured to a bench in the corner with no table or anything to place drinks or food upon.

They had a tarp stretched overhead and those benches were directly in the sun. We sat, but wanted to ask about moving. A waiter passed us several times without acknowledging us. Finally after about ten minutes, another fellow came out with glasses of water for the other table sat before us and us. The waiter came back by without acknowledging us again, as if we were just sitting there for fun, and took the other table's order. I tend to burn easily, so when the "not our waiter" came by again, we asked if we could move to an actual table, recently vacated. We were told that was reserved for someone else who wasn't yet there, and they offered to move us inside.

It's August in Houston. I promise I wouldn't have asked for a table outside if I felt at all safe eating indoors. So that's definitely a no, thank you. He then asked the other couple (sitting at a table that seated six) if they'd be interested in moving inside, and they declined.

So instead of seating people who were already there and had a reservation, they chose to hold the table in the shade for people who weren't there. At that point we had still not once been acknowledged by the waiter, and it had been 25 minutes.

We handed our water glasses to the host and left. If our business is so undervalued that we can't get a "table" with an actual surface upon which to eat, that doesn't require me to get a sunburn while eating, I'm not interested in spending money there. Oh, other than the $7 we had to cough up for parking.

So much for our first time at a restaurant in as long as I can remember. I'm so ridiculously disappointed, I don't even have...