Kemah Steak Company — Restaurant in Kemah

I don't even know where to start we had such an all around amazing experience! I wanted to surprise my boyfriend with a special 39th birthday dinner. My boyfriend loves steaks, cigars and whiskey so that's what I googled and Vinyl Draught Kemah Steak Company came up and I'm so glad it did! I was going to bring my bf here no matter what because it is right up his alley. But I am celiac and have dietary restrictions so I looked at the menu and thought oh yea I could easily eat a plain salad and plain baked potato. Upon calling the restaurant for my bfs bday dinner reservations I spoke to Doug letting him know of the special occasion and asked him about gluten free options just to see if they had anything else I could eat there. He asked what I was wanting to eat and I said I was thinking salad, baked potato and steak. Doug was very kind and reassuring he said he was going to talk to the chef and call me back. Quickly he called me back and said he talked to the chef and is going to go to the store and get me a special gluten free seasoning, I told him he doesn't have to go to that trouble I could just eat a plain steak no worries at all. Upon arriving for our reservations we were greeted at the door promptly and they let us pick the table we wanted to dine at. Kya our waitress was absolutely wonderful! I started to inform her of my dietary restrictions and she said Doug the owner already briefed her and they have everything set up that will be gluten free safe for me. I couldnt believe Doug was the owner! He was so kind and accommodating! I ordered the Midnight Rose drink which was so delicious. For dinner I had a salad with the most amazing vinegarette dressing I've ever tasted, baked potato and a beautifully seasoned melt in your mouth filet mignon. My bf had an old fashion, salad, loaded baked potato and their signature seasoned steak. My bf and I were absolutely blown away with how delicious everything was! Doug and Kya surprised my bf with a birthday cheesecake and they surprised me with a special gluten free dessert! I was so shocked I have never in my life had such kind compassionate special treatment with my dietary restrictions. Most restaurants make me feel like I am such a burden because of my dietary restrictions. Doug made me feel right at home. I am so grateful! As the night went on Kya and Doug told us amazing stories about some of the memorabilia they had in the restaurant, it was all so fascinating! Doug gave my bf and I a tour of the restaurant and the cigar room. I am not a smoker but my bf is and I was amazed at how the restaurant or the cigar room didn't reek of cigar smoke! The entire establishment smelt so good like leather! After dinner we relaxed in the cigar room and enjoyed the outdoor patio. I can't even put into words how amazing the staff here is! So kind, so accommodating, so welcoming! All around amazing amazing amazing! We can't wait to go back! With all my heart thank you Doug, Kya and the rest of the staff for making our experience so great! We can't wait to...

We were super excited to try this place because we've always heard good things about it. We are looking for a venue to host approximately 30ish people... This is the first place we tried.

As soon as we walked in the place it has a cool vibe. The bartender\ manager was bartending and suggested a drink to a couple of our friends and they loved them!

We got sat at our table In the back of the restaurant. The waitress gave us some very interesting information about the building, a table and all of the maps and such on the walls.

We were a table of six. There were a couple of people sitting at the bar and apparently our waitress had a two top towards the front of the building.

With having only eight people to wait on, you shouldn't have to wait for a drink longer than maybe a minute...

The food... Dun dun daaaaa

Appetizers were amazing! We had the meatballs and the shrimp scampi. Both were absolutely wonderful. The shrimp were big, tasted awesome and we're also deveined. The sauce that the shrimp scampi comes in is just simply amazing! You'll probably get another one....

We had the filet. It was good. I like other places better. It was very thick and easy to cut. We did opt for the upper 2/3 filet. Our sides was a loaded baked potato and I had the three cheese grits, which their menu States they're famous for. The baked potato was good. I'm not really sure how you can mess that up but maybe.... The grits I was so sad. I put it in my mouth and it was like chewing on little pebbles.

When we ordered our food we ordered garlic butter some regular butter to go with our fillets. One of our friends got the pork chop. She did like it but she had to ask for her her garlic butter. Her side was esteemed spinach. It was very tasteless.

One of my friends got the red fish which was the fish of the day blackened. She is allergic to shrimp and she made this very clear to the waitress. When she was placing the order. The waitress made sure she would check for cross contamination etc. When their meal came out there was shrimp on top of her fish.

Our other friend ordered a ribeye. He is on the carnivore diet and eats ribeye just about 7 days a week. What they served him was not a ribeye. It was actually a New York strip. The manager was called over and the manager stated that it was what they're ribeye look like.

The food takes some time to get which is surprising when there's only six people to feed in the building. And when our food was being served one person would get their main dish. Another one get one side dish, another one getting a main dish and a side dish etc. Nothing was delivered at the same time. We waited a couple of minutes to receive our sides. Was just a baked potato and the grits while our filet just sat there.

I would probably go back just for the shrimp scampi. That was my most favorite thing and probably the only thing that...

When I say I was excited to try this place… well, I was excited.

It seemed like a little hidden gem in the midst of Kemah. It had that Austin-y, exclusive club vibe with its “red room” and dark-cherry-velvet club chairs and low-hanging chandeliers and big plush pillows in the booths.

I was willing to forgive all the small slip-ups for the first 20-30 minutes of our experience.

Then, the salads came. Our waitress waxed poetic about the fact that she could whip up any salad dressing, implying it would be from scratch. When the salads arrived, the iceberg lettuce was browned at the edges, and the cherry tomatoes on mine were pale, uncut, and about the quality you might expect from a grocery store the caliber of Food King. My boyfriend’s tomatoes were at least sliced, which suggests they at least they were aware of what a salad involves, but mine were just rolling around at the sides of the plate. Dressing was slobbered around the plate, straight from a jar.

No matter. We weren’t here for the salads. It was the steak we were after.

We ordered a $96 bone-in ribeye.

Is that what got brought to our table? No. We got the lesser steak, a boneless something-or-other. Did they catch the mistake? No, we had to bring it to their attention. (At this point I was totally willing to forgive and forget, still, as maybe it was just a miscommunication.) But the waitress confirmed that it was indeed the $96 steak we had ordered and that the chef had messed up because “he was training someone.” That’s cool and all, but we were the only customers in the entire restaurant at this point, and I’m not sure how you manage to read an order wrong when it’s the only order of the entire night.

It still tasted decent, so okay. But we were certainly not offered a chance for them to rectify the situation and replace it with our steak of choice, nor was the price reduced beyond the $82 that this boneless, smaller oz. steak cost according to the menu.

Still, we liked our peppy TGI Friday-style waitress so it was forgiveable, I guess.

The real icing on the cake came when I went to the women’s restroom. There were soppy towels covering the floors (like right in the middle of the floors and stalls, not along the baseboards or anywhere reasonable). They were dirty with something that looked like poo-water. When I reached for the toilet paper, I realized the roll was trailing along half the length of the entire restroom, on the floor, also soggy. There was no soap when I went to wash my hands.

I mentioned the state of the restrooms to the three laughing, nonchalant staff that were leaning around the bar. The waitress literally said “Yeah, the towels are just there now. We can’t really do anything about it.”

Cool.

When she brought the check, she hovered over the card reader while my boyfriend tipped her.

They honestly sent us off with the line “See...