The Union Kitchen — Restaurant in Houston

It took my wife almost 20 minutes to get her wine. It took me almost 30 minutes and several consults to get a beer as two separate servers including the "beer and wine guy" tried to help. The B & W guy couldn't even tell me what beer they had on his first trip even though he was sent over to inform/advise on beer. It wasn't until his third trip that he was able to tell me about all the beer they had on tap, still obviously under-informed on what the various beers were. And the actual beer selection wasn't even as good as the menu listed.

Crab cakes were described as all lump no breadcrumbs which sounding interesting although not my style. In actuality, we had to search for crab meat, couldn't taste the crab meat or much else. If cheap frozen crab cakes from a box at Kroger tasted like this, I would be disappointed. My wife was thinking the exact same thing. No questions were asked even though my wife sent hers back with only a single bite taken out of it. The duo of sauces (marinara and something herbal?) were an interesting choice.

My wife's entree was the veal chop which was tasty. Probably rates 3/5 for the plate. Although the bone was described as succulent with marrow and was actually rather bone dry. She said the sauce was tasty. The cookedness of the mushrooms in the risotto varied from raw to done.

My hangar steak with jalapeño grits was a flabby, three sectioned slab with lots of fat (roughly 1/3 inedible and I was searching for meat) with absolutely no jalapeño in the grits. Jalapeño wasn't even held next to these grits. I expect the cook looked back after the grits were done and saw that he/she left out the jalapeño, if they were even a thought. Unfortunately, I chose the on-menu hangar steak over the nightly special hangar steak because of the jalapeño grits. This was pointed out to our waiter. He had a few excuses at first. Maybe an apology eventually after I explained to him that it wasn't a small amount of jalapeño, it was absolutely no jalapeño. As for the steak, I would have left this one at the store.

The cheesecake for desert was tasty. Best part of the meal for me.

We would return potentially for the cheesecake, but would not have another meal here.

We are rating this restaurant 2/5 because it was clean and even though service sucked, the server seemed like...

I don't get out Memorial too often these days, but did find myself out that way for lunch sometime back. A meeting had been scheduled to discuss a recent application failure of gateways that handle the newest predictive maintenance operations for some of the large oil and gas companies with engineering offices located in Houston. A good friend had needed me to act as liaison because of my time in the oil field and my associations with his customers. And today I had enough time before the meeting to grab a bite and found myself the Union Kitchen. Had never been here but was giving it a shot, and see what they had to offer. I had been greeted and seated when in walks the two company men (they're Bosses on an oil rig) I was to meet a little later that day, and they were seated outside on the patio. Well hell, I wasn't going to sit inside now and miss the opportunity this coincidence had offered me. It was my luck they'd chosen this restaurant today and I needed to relocate to outside. The restaurant was a little busy and the servers were hustling, but I was politely re-seated outside and didn't catch any attitude from my server, which I was fully expecting for my sudden inconvenient request. This waiter even offered menu item suggestions, each of us settling on a seafood dish. Now I don't say this lightly; Mine was B@d@$$ (my wife's looking over my shoulder and made me change the spelling). We were able to start our meeting while we ate and didn't leave until we needed to look at some diagrams. Here's the deal, we will definitely be back here to continue these working lunch discussions because one, we thoroughly enjoyed our menu choices, two, the casual atmosphere outside was perfect for our conversation, and three, we will most certainly be requesting this same guy because he made it happen. We never once had to look around wondering when he'd return. Hats off to you my man! So drop by and check out this menu. I'm sure everything is good, but like I said, their seafood is D@#n (there she goes again) good, and ask to be seated in Ethan's section. I'm not sure I'm remembering his name, maybe Evan? Anyway, gruff sounding voice and sporting a man-bun. You can't miss him. Thanks again for the good food and everyone drop on...

Rainy night in Houston, came in for a two day business trip. Decided to look through Google and yelp for a place to have dinner with the wife. We landed on The Union Kitchen.

This wasn't her first choice, I talked her out of another restaurant because I thought the pics online didn't lend to a great dining experience.

We were placed in the bar area, at a two chairs wobbly table. It's almost 2023, why do you still have wobbly tables?

The barkeep took our order. Not terribly impressed with with her customer service although she did recommend an entree for the wife. I felt like we weren't a priority and more like a couple that didn't require any speical attention.

Calamari was room temp, covered in banana and red peppers. They were somewhat busy so it took a while for the entree to come out.

There was a woman delivering food to tables dressed like she was on her way out that night. Hair flowing, no ponytail like the other waitresses. Huge issue considering people with long hair tend to shed that hair.

Entree came along with my ceviche. Wow, ceviche was covered in cabbage, literally pieces of tuna that could fit in a teabag with room to spare.

Back to the service.... It wasn't the worst I've had but you really felt the staff had more important customers than the seventy-seven dollar ticket we were leaving. When we were seated the barkeep asked if we wanted water. She sat two other customers after us and just brought them water without question.

I always feel obligated to tip generously because people in the hospitality industry for the most part deserve it. The experience I had tonight pretty much cemented the fact that's not always the case. Sometimes you really have to earn...