Navy Blue — Restaurant in Houston

This has been my first visit to Navy Blue restaurant where I have been dying to eat for a long time now. This review will be going into details so please bear with me. Most of what my wife and I ordered will be described and followed with pictures.

Upon arrival, we were greeted by a lovely hostess and a General Manager Greg,  who took us to our table. Our servers were Alison and Evan and both of them provided service and food knowledge far beyond your regular fine dining.

The ambiance of the restaurant is very relaxing and the open kitchen concept really adds up to your overall dining experience. Oshibori service was prompt and right after, we were presented with the cocktail menu and a wine list. My wife ordered Only Sans mocktail and I ordered Tanqueray Gimlet and a mocktail Seaside Bramble.

Alison brought the food menu and she did a great job explaining different groups of dishes, going in detail about the ingredients. The entire menu presentation was done effortlessly and within minutes.

We ended up ordering Ora King Salmon Tartare with harissa and spring pea with potato chips and Spanish Octopus that came with house made kimchi, fermented soy beans and potato salad with sesame. One thing I will tell you: this is the best octopus I have ever had in my life.

For our main course, we ordered Seafood Paella (keep in mind that this was a Monday special and is not available every day) that came with mussels, clams, chicken and octopus and we added scallops. As a side we got Succotash,  one of the finest sides we both ever tasted.

Needless to say that all of this food came out without any delays, with fresh ingredients and in on time.

Our desert was Chocolate Coulant (one of the best molten chocolate cakes with warm soft center with caramel and crusty outside, served with scotch ice cream). This desert is so decadent and a must in this restaurant.

Now, something more important than food... The service. Just sitting in this restaurant, watching all the employees, from the hostess, captains, assists, bartenders, kitchen chefs and sous chefs, you get this feeling that is really hard to express in words. The ENTIRE team works as a single unit, a single organism, flawlessly, with such elegance and posture. The silent service is always present for those of us who work in the industry and know how to recognize it. Every employee of this amazing establishment showed how much they care about their guests and their guests' experience.

There are no words to explain how much I recommend this restaurant.

The entire team LIVES AND BREATHES hospitality. It is in their hearts, their smiles and their blood.

So do yourself a huge favor, go and experience the wonders of hospitality at Navy Blue and let me know your...

UPDATED REVIEW. See previous beLOW. The general manager contacted me via email and said that they apologized for the experience that we had and that they would like to invite us back to make up for the issues. We decided to see what they would do better and we went back. Everything was better EXCEPT THEY CHARGED US AGAIN FOR OUR MEAL! If they had comped our meal the first time, then I would understand having us pay, however, when a restaurant says they want to remedy the situation, they should not charge you.

PREVIOUS REVIEW. Unfortunately we were let down by our experience at Navy Blue. We arrived for our 6:30 reservation and received a nice table. We were asked if we wanted water or to order a cocktail. We were brought Aqua Panna in a 1 liter bottle, no one asked if we just wanted filtered tap water. We then asked our server if the entrees come with a side since it says at the bottom that it includes one side, he said yes. So, my wife ordered the red snapper seared and the greens. I ordered the fish sandwich and French fries. The food arrived in about 20 minutes and she received a small bowl of greens and about a 6oz. fish. She said the fish flavor was overrun by a strong olive oil flavor, so she avoided the olive oil on the plate. My grouper sandwich had a tomato relish on it that basically just tasted like ketchup, which I am not a fan of, nonetheless, we did not complain and ate our food. Half way through her fish, she got a part that was extremely fishy tasting, she removed a portion and put it on the side. The server did not come back to ask us how the food was and it was actually another person that asked us how our meal was. We only mentioned the fishy issue and because it was our anniversary, they said they would bring us something for dessert. They brought out the key lime pie, which looked amazing and well presented. My wife could only take 2 bites. The pie had so much zest and lime flavor that it was nearly inedible. We asked for the check and were shocked to see that 1 bottle of water, a fish sandwich and a small piece of fish with a small bowl of greens was $109.00. We will not be returning as we feel that the waiter was either not trained or we were overcharged and the food experience was not up to that price point. On another note, it gets very loud in the restaurant as there is no acoustic treatment on the wood ceiling and the conversations can be heard from the other side of the restaurant. Parking is quite difficult and not nearby. There is valet, but they were parking some cars near the dumpster for...

The first time we went it was a 5 star experience.

The Quality has gone down significantly. We were seated promptly at our appointment time. It took another 5 minutes for a manager to ask us if anyone had stopped by for water, she handled that and brought us menus.

From there it didn't improve much. We had one gentleman stop by, and go MIA for another 5 minutes, finally the manager took our appetizer and drink order. The supposed waiter did a 10second "are you ready", which we informed him the manager took the order.

We ordered 2 types of oysters, they brought the tray out, the server did NOT know what each oyster on the tray was. It was a fun guessing game. We were not given plates or utensils, that took another 5 minutes of waiting, and asking for plates. The quality of the Oysters were great.

We were ready to order and I had to signal to get the supposed waiter back, and at this point is when he informed us he was NOT our waiter (30minutes into dining here, we still had not seen our actual waiter) Another 4-5 minutes and the real waiter appeared. Took our order and ran off.

The Ora King Salmon Tartare was NOT fresh. The Endive salad was decent but for the price, NOT worth it, I believe they seriously chopped up 1 pecan and a sliver of pear for the salad. The taste in the couple bites that had all the ingredients was good.

Throughout the night I had to continue drinking my date's water, they were very slow in refilling! We had some cocktails, I don't recall the creative names at the moment. The food did come out, we had the Crawfish Risotto, and the Dry Aged Burger, both decent, nothing to write about.

We had some left and were planning on taking it home, along with the delicious biscuits, paid out, we stayed another 20 minutes to finish our 2nd round of drinks. If you haven't been here before they box and bag your takeout to pickup at the front when you're leaving. Well 20 minutes after paying and finishing our drinks we got up to leave and nothing was left for us at the front, frustrated we just left .. there are other aspects of the service that accumulated into a bad experience.

Overall, this experience left much to be desired. It seems the restaurant's quality has been steadily declining, possibly due to being stretched thin across multiple locations. Until they address these issues, we'll be...