Prairie House Restaurant-Lewisville — Restaurant in Lewisville

I have pateonized this place 3x in the last 5 weeks, but only ate twice. The last time I was there, I had to walk out due to poor customer service by the bar tender and the manager on duty leading me to lose faith that I'd be served untainted food.

I sat at the bar at 625p on a Tuesday. The bar was full except for 1 seat (after i sat down), but about 5 people at the bar were about to leave & the restaurant overall didnt seem overly busy for dinner on a Tuesday. I proceed to sit there for 10mins with the bar tender not even acknowledging I was a human being on earth breathing air. He proceeded to close out the 5 people closest to me, run their payment etc, while I sat. After all the seats were empty he walks right in front of me to go grab something to make a drink & continues to pretend I am casper. I look around, see no one at the host stand & pick up my phone to call the restaurant Im sitting in, right in front of him, to get the Manager. He skampers off. Whoever answered my call drug their feet getting me to the manager, but eventually I got the her on the line. I told her I was sitting at her bar being ignored for over 10mins and she said she come over.

When she came over, she wasnt friendly and it looked on her face like she was holding in frustration. When she spoke to me, she wanted to pretend like I hadn't been ignored and disrespected for 12mins straight (at this time) and proceed like this was a regular dining situation. I refused to pretend with her and asked her why I got ignored for so long. She made excuses, said she was busy elsewhere, she didnt know what was up with her bar tender & acted like the restaurant was busier than it really was. I dont accept this explanation & explain my situation to her again and she responds by starting to play victim by claiming I was raising my voice at her. This was untrue. The loudest person in our conversation was her the whole time. I asked her if I was the wrong color to get good service here, and she started talking about how she remembers me from a month ago & how things went ok that time. (Sidenote, she didnt know this, but when i was there 2 wks ago, when she was off, a different bar tender screwed up my bill and tried to overcharge me.) Anyway, I proceed to get things back on subject & move the conversation back to the present, not reminiscing about a month ago & then she accuses me of "not letting her get a word in".

At no point in time did her tone or face appear friendly or apologetic. She begrudgingly offers to comp my meal & asks me for my drink order...but then immediately tells me it will take a while for me to get my food because of some other orders (that got put in before me because I have now been at this place for over 15mins at this time without even a drink). Based on her tone and the convenient excuse she had for why my food will come out slow, I dont trust that they really wont spit or otherwise taint my food in retaliation, so I calmly excuse myself from the bar and leave. Only when Im walking out does the charm and fake friendly voice come out as she wishes me well & asks me "to try us again". Disgustingly fraudulent.

Last time I'm there, they treat me like I am too mentally incompetent to Add or figure out what my bill should be. This time Im there they treat me like I'm invisible at first...then when the manager comes over she treats me like what I have to say doesn't matter and somehow I'm an uncivilized aggressive ogre who is in the wrong & shes the true victim (in all this).

I wonder if things would have gone differently during my last 2 visits if I had ancestry from Europe instead of another more southern continent.

In conclusion The food is generally above average & the prices here are fair...so Im suure this place will continue to get plenty business, but its sad people at this establishment still treat people who look like me as poorly as they do. It's 2025.

Worst restaurant...

Update: this review was written when the restaurant was J2 steakhouse. Have yet to visit the restaurant under the new name and menu.

Nice, new place. Decent parking considering the location.

Started with the Tartare.

It was okay but the whole grain mustard (tasted like Maille brand - my favorite) in combination with pickled jalapeno slices masked the beefy flavor. Would like to try it again with less mustard and perhaps fresh chili slivers in lieu of pickled. The quail egg was a nice touch but it was cooked too hot so the white was a bit paper-y. Perhaps just the yolk? Quail eggs can safely be served raw, so a yolk on the tartare by itself would be easier and just as tasty.

As good as their beef is, they should offer Carpaccio. It's hard to find these days and it's yummy and it has to be profitable, I imagine.

The pretzel bread is effing delicious. So, so good!

They offer several interesting drinks. I tried their old fashioned and then requested a custom version with a splash of amaretto with rye whiskey. They happily accommodated me and the server (Michael) and the trainee (Drew) stopped by for a brief conversation on the benefits of rye whiskey versus standard Kentucky Bourbon. They even asked the beverage manager (Cody?) about ordering in some specialty things that might make for some good old fashioned variations.

The scallops appetizer was next. This was excellent. It's served raw or cooked with citrus like ceviche perhaps. Fishy? No, ocean-y and beautiful. Micro bulls-blood greens were new for me and taste a bit like cilantro. Yummy! (If you like cilantro, which I do) The aioli on the plate was broken/separated but I don't know if it's supposed to be that way. In any case it was delicious and didn't take away from the dish at all.

The mixed green salad was good.

Had a Red Flyer cocktail next. it's a strawberry orange purée and it's more orange than strawberry. Bright, clean, fresh. A bit more strawberry flavor might be good ... but then it may taste more like a strawberry daiquiri so maybe it's best left as is.

It's about this point I noticed that there was no salt or pepper on the table. I hadn't needed it at this point and didn't miss it for the rest of the meal either.

Now for the steak. I ordered one of the dry aged steaks. Their second from top tier, I believe. It was cooked to exactly the right temperature.

I would suggest not putting seasoned butter on top of the steak as it masked the flavor and melted into a greasy looking pool. Perhaps serve it on the plate rather than on top of the meat. There was a green garnish that I think was a garlic scape. It was very good and perfect with the steak.

I also ordered the mushrooms.

The mushrooms were very flavorful and with a meaty consistency. More toothsome even than a portobello, for example.

Dessert was a S'mores cheesecake. This was pretty good. A sour cream cheese tang with definite chocolate flavor. The white topping is meringue (as opposed to whipped cream) that has been scorched with a brulee torch. It went well with a cappuccino.

On the way out I was greeted by Johan, the manager? Owner? He asked how the meal was and wished me a good evening.

Michael was kind enough to include an extra pretzel bread in the to-go bag.

The food is quite good. The atmosphere was relaxed. The service was excellent. Definitely above average overall. The prices are rather high. Perhaps too high for the locale. I would like to see them make a go of it but I am concerned that their prices are higher than the area will sustain.

I will definitely be back (after my next bonus) and I'll see if the beverage manager actually ordered the walnut bitters so I can try our little experimental old fashioned. :)

Update: another visit .. try the Meyer lemon cheesecake,...

Our visit to Prairie House had a pretty strong start and then a very steady decline.

The restaurant itself feels more open than any restaurant I have ever been in and the overall light level, color palette, lots of cameras, and decoration makes it really hard to tell if you are in a nice place or a... Not so nice place?

The getting the bandidos, queso, and burnt ends, immediately was very satisfied by all three (especially the onion strings with the bandidos, those were actually the most impressively perfect single item we had while there) but the more we ate the more strange things we noticed about the food. The bandidos and the brisket (in the queso and the burnt ends) all seemed to have a sort of sour tang to them that wasn't the most appealing as typically you would want meat to be savory and then in the case of these two, sweet as well.

Speaking of sweet, the burnt ends weren't like burnt ends I have ever had, typically I expect burnt ends to be like a sort of meat candy with caramelized sweet sticky barbeque sauce coating them. These were more just like very (VERY) fatty chunks of brisket that still fell apart the way brisket typically would.

The consistency of the queso made it seem like maybe it is Monterrey Jack based or something that doesn't melt particularly well. Would prefer something more melty (golden velvet base maybe?)

The Caesar side salad was really not good. The Caesar dressing very easily could have been from a bottle as it mostly just tasted like mayonnaise and didn't seem very cold. The Parmesan was pretty flavorless and the croutons were extremely bland (pretty much just unseasoned white bread croutons)

My partner received a ribeye which was unfortunately overcooked (asked for medium rare, received more medium well, with just a hint of pinkness at center)

we had both gotten macaroni and cheese as a side which made me think of if someone had tried to create macaroni and cheese without any of the correct ingredients. Consistency was sort of pasty like you would expect a melted down cream cheese or ricotta to cause. Tasted flat.

Chicken fried chicken was pretty good, only thing I could think of is it could have done with more peppercorn flavor in the batter. Mashed potatoes were really good too.

Since I really couldn't eat the Mac and cheese our server swapped it out for some onion string for me (seriously those things are ridiculously good. The crunch is perfect and the batter adheres to the onions so well.)

That brings up our server - she was nice and capable but shortly after we ordered a large table came in and at that point it kind of seemed like she had moved on from us. If she asked if we wanted dessert I probably would have broke down and ordered the toffee Bundt cake (I was very full but it sounded really good) but she never asked. Our waters weren't refilled at all during the entire visit either.

This would be like a 2.5 if I could give it that, which to me is like a true neutral "eh." I could definitely eat here again but there are a lot of things I would not...