Don's Prime — Restaurant in Las Vegas

I get to Vegas 3-4x a year and one of our favorite things is to go to a nice restaurant. However, we aren't rich by any means and we aren't looking to spend $500 on a meal. So even when we go to nicer places we try to keep it under $100 each. We only eat meals like this maybe 5-6x a year generally (at home we eat cheaply). All this is to say that we have tried about 40-50 "nicer"Vegas restaurants over the past 10 years or so. We were excited to check out the fontainbleau (it's gorgeous and amazing btw) and have a great dinner at one of their new restaurants. We felt like a steakhouse or we would have tried motherWolf and dons prime looked like more of what we were looking for. It has a classic atmosphere with lots of velvet and dim lighting (but thankfully not DARK). We had a reservation and were promptly seated. Let me first say, when you make a reservation, ask for Rachel and Angel ("Rangel" is their Wait staff couple name). Rachel was pleasant and informative and not pushy and Angel was very funny with some pretty good sarcastic humor along with great server skills). They were both fantastic and exactly what we want out of wait staff at a high end restaurant (professional but not "uppity"). We don't eat a lot so that's helpful. I asked Rachel to recommend a reasonable priced steak (something around $100 is considered reasonable at these types of properties). She asked how hubby I was and I said I really can't only eat 4-6oz normally but am happy to take home what's left of day their dry aged ribeye (I Believe it was 18oz for $110) since I really live dry aged steak. I also had noticed a 9oz filet at $75. She asked if I'd ever had wagyu and I said I hadn't and couldn't probably afford to. She recommended an 8 oz. Strip American wagyu from cross Creek farms that is exclusively sold at their restaurant. It was $100 even so I said that seemed fair and I was happy to try something new. She said it was amazing and I went with her recommendation. We also had the salmon for the other entree and we shared a side of the Mac and cheese. No appetizers this evening. I did order a drink that I cannot remember the name of but it was a "smoked" old fashioned style drink with bourbon, vanilla bitters, cherry wood and smoke. It was incredible. I highly recommend it and for a nice restaurant in Vegas, the price was decent at $19. The food. The salmon was well cooked with a crispy outside. It is served with a lobster reduction and some accompaniments. The salmon itself had a good taste if very little flavor but the idea was to spoon on the reductions and eat that together. That was fantastic. Highly recommend and at only $38, a real steal of an item. The Mac and cheese was also absolutely delicious. Perfectly cooked, perfectly presented. Great mix of different cheeses and a heavy amount of butter and cream. Just a perfect side dish. And as for the steak... Well, let me tell you, it might have been the best steak I've ever had... And I've had a lot of steak. I would almost tell you that the flavor and texture almost reminded me more of butter. Creamy and rich. Every bite was so well marbled and delicious. There's no waste on this steak. Just the perfect mix of taste and texture. What am amazing piece of meat prepared perfectly. The food was a perfect 10/10 (though the bread was a bit lackluster, they had a pull apart bread and pretzel bread that were both fine but not spectacular in any way and do not match up with the quality of everything else at the restaurant). The service was a 10/10 as well. We were in Vegas to celebrate both our birthdays (March 1st & 17th, we visited dons prime on the 11th). We had mentioned this and they brought us BOTH a cake at the end of the meal on the house which I thought was very, very nice and special of them to do. There are only a couple of these "expensive" places in Vegas we've went that we return to regularly but you can guarantee that don's prime will be our new #1 spot going forward (Joe's Stone Crab & steakhouse at Caesars will sadly have to drop to #2). I cannot more...

Unfortunately OUR dining experience at Don's was a disappointment and most likely we will not be going back any time soon as it appears that this restaurant is fairly new and management clearly is NOT doing their job/taking part, that tasks are ran & handle correctly at this establishment.

For starters the temperature of one of the steaks was incorrect and came out cold. You can clearly tell that this steak must have been forgotten about and sat for a while as when I put the back of my hand on the steak, it wasn't even at room temperature. It was seriously cold. Also wanted steak to be cooked medium well, not medium rare which was the case. Yes we could have sent the steak back; though as we know, we would all be eating our food while one guest was left out waiting for their food while watching the rest of us eating. Just not right, considering this is a so call high end steakhouse. Also one of our guest ordered chicken which was clearly undercooked and was not consumed. You think our servers/manager would have caught on to the fact that some of our meals had issues as you can see that our meals were hardly touched. Instead our servers asked if we were through with our meals and immediately took our plates away. Didn't even asked if we wanted a box to take our food home: Very suspicious behavior. Also salad/plate was removed from me before I could even finish my salad. Literally had fork in hand.

Overall the most disappointing part of the night was when we addressed some of our concerns to one of the managers, he could have cared less, got defensive, and on several occasions interrupted me while I was talking and spoke over me. I think we all know when you are talking over someone, you are clearly not listening. I'm sorry though the management skills, or at least the manager we dealt with has no manager skills what so ever. A professional manager would have heard what the guest had to say and be concern, though in this case unfortunately this was NOT the case. Being a business owner and knowing to be courteous & calm in order to get my points across was a complete wasted effort and time concerning this manager. I then realized it was best to just leave the restaurant being disappointed. Just a horrible way to run a business.

I believe the General Manager is John and I believe from what I heard he used to be a manager at the SW Steakhouse at the Wynn. I hope he takes note of this review and trains his managers to be respectful and make sure the guest leave the restaurant with a decent dining experience. In all honesty, there is a lot of room for improvement.

On a good note the ambiance is amazing. Might be a little loud for some people, though overall we liked the vibe.

Also the following night we did have our dinner at the SW Steakhouse in the Wynn, which was absolutely epic. Food came out PERFECT as always, the managers who poured our wine were absolutely intelligent and gave us a run down/history on the wine we were ordering, the bus boys were attentive to all our needs/request. Just overall the experience was like night and day.

Really would be nice if the GM can get it together at Don's. Very nice restaurant though...

Visited on a Tuesday 5/21 and had a reservation for a few weeks booked. Our reservation for 2 was around 7, I showed up about 5 mins early. To say I’m disappointed is an understatement. I was told to wait about 30 mins and I’d be texted when the table was ready, I’m understanding so I thought no big deal and slots nearby is a plus. 30 mins passed, then 40, 45….i try to be patient so i let it go the extra 15. My husband decided to go check with the hostess for an ETA and to ensure she has the right number for us, since she didn’t read it back to us when initially getting there. We were told it would be about another 20 minutes and I think Alright, I’m starting to get annoyed but maybe they’re just behind…we kept ourselves busy on the slots but I decide to go wait by the hostess stand since it should be any moment we’re called at this point , I see about 3 other parties waiting and one ends up chatting to the group and leaves to another restaurant which I was tempted to do. I ask my husband if we should stay and he said after waiting we should stick it out so we did. After the initial 30 min wait plus the second 20 minute wait, and 5 mins on top of that for a grand total from arrival 55 minutes later we were caller to be seated, whew. about another 15 were we greeted. I kept thinking I hope the food redeems the wait, I was just happy to sit down to be honest but it was just OK. I can’t say I had the best steak of my life but that’s very subjective. I’m no steak snob, so maybe that’s just me, I will say Service was good I can’t really complain in that regard - it just felt very obvious that they’ve got things to workout here. I watched two tables finish their meal, pay, get up and the vacant table sat for about 15 mins before it was ready for a new guest, AH HA! Perhaps that is why so many of us waited well beyond our reservation time. I saw the manager walk about quite a bit but didn’t necessarily see table touches. No big deal just started half my life in the restaurant industry so I gathered my observations. Again, I try to be understanding and it wasn’t an awful experience but I was sorely disappointed and wished we went elsewhere. It was not very memorable unfortunately, the wait is what I’ll remember the most. If I had to be nit picky along with other reviews, it’s crowded and incredibly loud, it wasn’t the intimate steak dinner I expected. I think next time I’ll try a different place. For the price, I would expect top tier everything and dons prime...