Snake River Grill — Restaurant in Jackson

My family reserved a private room to celebrate my parents 45th anniversary. Surprisingly, there are few upper echelon restaurants in Jackson Hole and Snake River Grill had good reviews. My TL;DR - The table service was excellent, the food ranged for above average to poor, but the "SERVICE" was inadequate for a restaurant at this price point. We spent $3k to be underwhelmed, and when we pointed out that a $205 steak was clearly cooked poorly and not quality, there was a comical apathy and zero interest in resolving the matter. This is clearly due to the flood of tourists that are coming in no matter what. Very disappointed, and I would not go back if it was free.

Review The menu is uninspired and pedestrian. The single dish that delighted me was the crumpets. Fried chicken skin, excellent fermented hot sauce, and slaw served with a crumpet. Delicious.

None of the other apps were bad, per say. But average doesn't cut it when one is charging $13 for 5 small slices of bread.

The salads were also "fine". Kudos for serving a quality crudo this far inland, but a crudo with a vinaigrette and fresh greens was played out in 2020. Now? it's just sad.

I was debating between the flank and NY strip, as was my wife, and the waiter suggested the 32oz Wagyu ribeye. I told him that I have sworn off large format steaks because top tier steakhouses (Hawksmoore, K Rico, Bourbon) have let me down every time. It is either over or undercooked for MR, and I can slice my own steak thank you very much. The waiter "swore" that they are different, and because I prefer a ribeye to a strip or wagyu flank, we went for it. Also worth noting their flank was sourced from Snake River Farms, where I have bought brisket and dino ribs and shipped them to Nashville. Shipped frozen, the quality is still amongst the best I have ever smoked. The ribeye was listed as Wagyu, but no SRF sourcing or grade attached, and it showed. I asked about the grade of the ribeye and was told A5.

The ribeye was served and it was not even close to A5, and was not properly cooked. Parts of the steak were MR, but more of the steak was MW-WD. I have cooked 40oz tomahawks and you have three ways to do it right. 1. Sous vide and reverse sear. 2. Indirect heat then reverse sear. 3. Sear and oven. This was definitely not sous vide nor seared and baked. It may have been indirect heat with an attempt at a reverse sear, or grilled for the full time at a low grill temp (400).

However they cooked it, the amount of grey, chewy meat was shocking. The fat was overwhelming, and not the tasty fat that makes me love ribeyes - chewy and not rendered at all. There is zero chance that the ribeye was A5. It was A, B, C 1 or 2.

Bad steaks happen. When we were asked by our waiter what we thought, we were very polite but honest. The quality of the meat was disappointing as was the cook. And pre-sliced is something we didn't want. He said he understood and would talk to his chef. He returned a few minutes later and said that "chef appreciates your recommendations" and walked away. I waited on tables for 10 years and I know this guy is in an impossible situation. I even went as far as to say "I know you didn't cook it", but made it clear that it was sub par. It was never addressed after that. No manager, no chef, no offer to make it right. 16 of us paid $750 to rent a room, had ordered 20 cocktails and bottles of a great Chateau-neuf-du-pape, an app and or salad per person, and 12 steaks. This clearly wasn't an attempt to chew and screw.

For what it's worth, we paid chef Scott Nechay to come to our house and cook 4 out of the 7 nights, and the night after this debacle was steak night. He cooked piedmontese strips and it was so superior to the ribeye and the strips we had at Snake River Grill, we regretted going there.

Unless you are in a pinch, I would avoid it. And definitely avoid the...

We had traveled from New Orleans to Jackson for my birthday. This was my birthday dinner. We were seated at a booth. It took 8-minutes to get our drink order. It took another 10-minutes to get an appetizer order placed. Appetizers were okay. Nothing out of the ordinary, nothing special. Once we finished our appetizers, it took 20-minutes to get our dinner, again nothing special. We needed refills on our beverages, which never happened. After dinner we sat there waiting for a dessert menu. No refills, no dessert menu, no contact with Sam. I suggested we go somewhere else for a little birthday dessert. Supposedly, arrangements were made for dessert at the time of reservation. So, we waited. Finally, after another 20-minutes of waiting another person came by and cleared our plates and asked if there was anything else we wanted. We said yes and explained the surprise dessert situation, which ended up not being a surprise because of the lack of attention on the restaurant and server. We received our coffees, which was the best tasting item of the whole evening, and dessert. Sam asked if we needed anything else, we said no. He was prompt on getting us our check. That was the fastest service we had gotten during the entire meal. Maybe I'm being a little harsh, but the restaurant came highly recommended by two friends who live in Jackson. I think if we had dropped their names the service might have been better. It is disappointing to have a birthday event be ruined by the lack of attention to detail. Truly a memorable event for all the wrong reasons. Also, to clarify, this was two people eating dinner, not a party of eight, which Sam seemed to spend more time with. And, we were two women. Traditionally, we see ourselves as generous tippers, more than 20% on the full amount of the check, not pretax. It's a struggle to tip for us when situations arise like this. Usually, because it's two women we get seated at the crappy table by the bathroom, which we always say, no please move us to a table we choose, we are always the last to get waited on if there are other male/female couples or more than 4 people in a party. Servers usually say women don't tip, so why waste your time. I think Sam was one of those people. If the service is good then the tip should be good. If you consistently treat women as second class patrons, then you will consistently get crappy tips. This is the dilemma. We actually tipped Sam well above what he should have gotten because we did not want to be stereotyped in that way. I chose to use a review to vent my deep dissatisfaction with our experience. We went to other restaurants in the area that I highly recommend!!! Persephone's bakery, to die for breakfast! Local Co was amazing and the bartender/server was so much fun to talk with. He's a great skier too!! And Trio, another gastronome delight and unparalleled service!! As you can see, we will be recommending these other restaurants...

I’ve had family go to Snake River for years and when I was planning a trip to Jackson I was excited to take some friends there for a meal but unfortunately the food and experience was terrible. We ate at 2 other amazing restaurants in town (Gloriettas and Gather) that blew this place out of the water. The minute we sat down at our table the service was terrible and our waitress seemed uninterested in serving our us. We ordered 2 appetizers and over 6 cocktails and 2 beers for our table of 3. We also brought a nice bottle of wine with us and paid the $40 restaurant corking fee for it. 4 of our cocktails were old fashions the first 2 old fashions were served with a luxardo cherry (which is correct) and the third one came out with a maraschino cherry. When we asked the waiter if they were out of luxardos we were told no. The next old fashion was served with no cherry or orange peel. At a high end restaurant the inconsistency shouldn’t happen. The 3 meals ordered were two NY Strip Bisons (ordered medium rare) and 1 special which was a venison tenderloin (ordered medium rare). Our waitress when we sat down asked if we wanted our bottle to be opened and poured and we said it can be opened to breath and then let her know when we are ready to have it poured. After eating our appetizers we asked the waitress to pour the wine and she ignored us. Our waitress proceeded to disappear from the dinning area for over 20 minutes and our table was ignored by the staff. Another waiter noticed we had empty drinks and all 3 of us at the table we’re not only looking around for our waitress. He got another drink order for the table and poured our wine per our request. Eventually our meals came out (waitress still no where to be found) and the steaks were charred to a crisp and lacked any sort of moisture and the venison inconsistently cooked and partially charred and cooked medium to medium well. The entire time our meal was at our table we were ignored by the staff and no one came over to ask how our meal was or poured our wine when our glasses were empty. We sat with empty plates for a while and our waitress finally showed up again and took our plates in silence and didn’t once ask how the meal was. We proceeded to request our cheek and the waitress didn’t say anything at all to our table. I’ve never been to a 4-5 star restaurant that didn’t have someone check in on a table and ignore customers like Snake River did. All 3 of us at the table have had meals all over the US and world and never had an experience like this. It wasn’t like we weren’t ordering food (spent over $500 between the 3 of us) we were all dressed nicely with pants and button down shirts and we are all civilized individuals but unfortunately treated like second...