Shagbark — Restaurant in Lakeside

My wife and I took her family to Shagbark during the week between Christmas and New Years as part of a tour through Richmond - a city we love but they've never spent much time in. Because we really wanted to make an awesome impression, we made reservations at great restaurants and planned fun experiences - really hoping everything would be exceptional.

Shagbark may have great reviews and might be highly-recommended by some...but it was a giant black mark on the entire trip we planned for our family.

While the restaurant is gorgeous and the service is attentive, the food was simply unacceptable for the prices. Dishes were under seasoned, poorly conceptualized, or just poorly executed. Almost everything after the appetizers that hit the table had something wrong with it:

Rockfish: Seasoned so poorly that we had to request a salt and pepper shaker and go to town to make it palatable.

Duck breast: A poor sear left unrendered fat and rubbery skin that was completely unappetizing. This shouldn't even be on the menu if the kitchen can't render the fat and get the skin crispy on the duck breast...and they're charging $42 for it.

Venison bolognese: This was an actual dumpster fire. The sauce was under seasoned to start, and then topped with a giant scoop of flavorless ricotta which just muted the flavors even more and made the consistency of the sauce unnecessarily creamy. They placed large, hamfistedly-halved "confit" tomatoes on top, which added nothing to the dish except the need to awkwardly slice up your own tomatoes in a vessel that clearly wasn't designed for slicing. The pearl onions were hard and raw and added nothing but an off-putting raw onion flavor. This was the dish I was most excited about based on its description, and it was a flavorless, muddled, chunky disaster - topped with a thin, burnt slice of bread for...reasons?

Chicken breast: The first dish we sampled that actually had flavor - but also a strange personality disorder. The romesco sauce tasted like BBQ sauce - which would be awesome with the chicken, alone, but didn't really work with the gnocchi at all. Also, the ratio of mushrooms to gnocchi was skewed with far too many mushrooms. At least the chicken was well-seasoned and flavorful - the first protein that we received that was both cooked well and seasoned well.

I was truly shocked at the food that we were served. Every dish had a mistake in execution or simply didn't taste good.

The overall feeling that I got from Shagbark is that producing solid, flavorful food that people want to eat seems to have taken a backseat to creating heaping, convoluted, intricately-plated dishes that look impressive but aren't cooked properly, seasoned well, or well conceptualized.

Considering the prices, we could have gotten much better food at other restaurants in Richmond (a place like L'Opposum) and have been much happier. The ingredients on the dish might justify the menu prices, but the flavors and quality of the preparation certainly don't...things were just "meh" or downright bad across the board.

We left embarrassed for choosing a restaurant that was both bad AND incredibly expensive. Avoid making the same mistake and go...

Very disappointing experience coming here to celebrate a special occasion. Go somewhere else. The service is horrendous. We spent over an hour here and only got 1 cocktail, one app, and a dozen oysters. We had been sitting at our table for 15 mins before anyone even came to our table to give us water.

The runner offered us extra bread (our server was not coming to our table) and we said yes, please, and he cleared our bread plate. We assumed as any sane person would that he would bring us a fresh plate of bread, but he brought back our dirty plate with new bread and even brought us back our dirty forks, and knives on that plate with the new bread. The dirty utensils were replaced back on top of the bread. Attached photo. WHAT?

Someone finally cleared our oyster plate but no other dirty plates and ten more minutes went by with nobody coming to our table and the dirty plates remained on our table. Finally someone came and brought the peach and tomato salad, which we had so appreciated they split for us on two plates. Sadly, the peaches were not yet ripe so they were flavorless and rock hard. If you have a peach dish on the menu, it should be served with ripe ready to eat peaches. Otherwise, don’t offer it. We wanted to send it back, so we waited waited waited and nobody ever came. Our server went to several other tables surrounding us but never came to us. It was so bizarre. Finally we physically got up and walked to the hostess stand and asked for the manager.

The manager was very unprofessional, never apologized, never offered a resolution or attempted to help or show any customer service skills or consideration. In the end, we told him we wouldn’t be paying for the oysters because he asked was there something wrong with the oysters that you aren’t paying I said yes, I ate them while my previous courses dirty dishes sat there, my water glass was empty (this was my only beverage and it was gone), and I didn’t have everything I wanted to eat them with. Our server never checked on us once they were dropped and we had to flag down a runner to grab horseradish for us. The manager said - so you’re just walking out on your bill? I said I’m not walking out, I’m telling you we aren’t paying due to the horrible food and service and how you’ve treated us. The manager rolled his eyes, slapped the checkbook closed, and stormed off. The hostess who overheard all of this apologized to us on our way out. She was lovely.

Just go...

Shagbark was on my short list of actual sit-down restaurants worth trying in Richmond.

I made reservations some weeks out with a request for clarity on the difference between lounge seating and dining room seating. Inopportune timing on my end as the restaurant was closed and I could not find out the difference prior to the night we had dinner. The point of my inclusion of this part? Dress accordingly, as the dining room option does not offer any reprieve from the sweltering July heat outside via a nonexistent or nonfunctional air conditioning system inside. Even the poor service staff was fanning themselves and trying to cool off.

Now for the culinary aspect: the food was what I would expect based on the price and presentation: great, well crafted and ultimately delicious. Starting with a seasonal peach and heirloom tomato salad that was perfectly balanced with its numerous components, fresh oysters that had all of the fixings you might desire, steaks—tuna and bovine—before finishing with the Meyer lemon crème brûlée. The NY strip was cut horizontally, which I had never seen before and was cooked to a beautiful medium rare. Succulent beef with a delectable strawberry balsamic dressing and the scalloped potatoes somehow shined through it all. The black peppercorn ahi tuna? So tender one could use their tongue to press it into their hard palate instead of traditional mastication. The plate features asparagus cooked to perfection and the best gnocchi I've had the pleasure to eat in some time. Easily some of the best food I've had in a while. The dessert was lightly chilled and the caramelized top was a gorgeous brown glass of confectionery goodness.

Our server was keenly aware of any needs we may have had and attentively checked in with us. Kudos to them, as their ability to routinely and discreetly maintain our dining equilibrium was professional to say the least.

If you like the sound of American Southern food, but truthfully are happy with delicious food served in the presence of trophy heads and a myriad of other unique decor choices do check out Shagbark....