Harry's Stone Grill — Restaurant in Madison

The artichoke dip got us to come back a few times, the continued high prices versus quality of food, the poor service, and the nickel-and-diming of their customers made sure we'll never go back. I want to support small businesses, I have several local restaurants that I would go to any day of the week over a chain. But those small businesses don't drop a load of hidden fees on your bill every time you eat there. $19 for a 10 ounce Ribeye, side salad, and baked potato. For the quality of steak they buy/cook, $19 is too much, but I knew I was going to pay that when I ordered it. I ordered the rib-eye medium-rare, I get that the difference between rare and medium-rare is pretty small, but when the steak comes out cold it's unacceptable. I searched the entire menu over, nowhere on the menu did it say that getting the potato loaded was extra, the server did not notify us of this either, hidden charge #1. When the server was notified of this she looked the menu over, did not find the language that stated it was an extra charge, and simply said that it cost extra everywhere you go. I don't know the statistics on this, but when I've seen that at other places, they clearly state it on the menu. When you order the artichoke dip with chips, and then you get charged extra for bread that you didn't receive, that's unacceptable. Not only is this an extra charge that we were not made aware of, but we did not receive the "goods" to begin with. The service was not the best but I put up with worse. When these complaints were brought to the server's attention, that's as far as they went. Not only this last visit, but the past several visits we've had here where inconsistencies have arisen on the bill. I don't blame the servers for this, I blame the owners. The issues that we've had with the servers at this restaurant have been consistent, consistent to the point that they would have had to have been trained to serve in such a manner. The culture at this restaurant is disturbing, and it's a shame that this facility is lumped into the category of "small businesses" when so many other Mom and Pop stores have such great customer service, courtesy, and value, all of which are categories that this dump exceedingly lacked. For the last time Harry's Stone Grill has been weighed in the balances and found wanting. I'm embarrassed to admit that we went here so many times and it took this long for us to say enough is enough.

There are so many terrific restaurants to choose from in Madison, be advised, spend your money more wisely then we have for life...

We arrived on a Saturday evening, around 7:00pm and the place was packed. We thought that was a good sign. Waited about 15 minutes for the four of us to be seated. Again, not a bad wait for a Saturday evening. The decor of the lobby and dining room, complete with good-quality black and white photography of local Madison landmarks and a plethora of taxidermy hanging on the walls showed hope of this being a good place to find good food. The waitress was pleasant and prompt. While there may be better items on the menu, we ordered the following: Fried Pickles Appetizer Cobb Salad with Grilled Chicken Fish and Chips with Fried Okra Grilled Cheese Kids Meal Chicken Strips Kids Meal The grilled cheese seemed to be a good one, made with texas toast and plenty of cheese. The salad wasn't bad, but was just a basic bag salad with a sliced hard-boiled egg, a handful of bacon bits, a handful of croutons and a sliced, grilled chicken breast on top. The breaded cod fish, the french fries , fried pickles and the fried okra were all frozen, pre-made foods from some place like GFS, thrown into the fryer and served. No attempt to make it anything more. The tartar sauce seemed to be straight from the bottle and the "ranchero" sauce with the fried pickles was a very thin ranch sauce with a small amount of chili power or something similar added to give it an orange color and a very slight "southwest" flavor. Again, seemed like it had just come from the bottle or bucket. At least from the clientele from this particular Saturday night, it seems that the majority are there to get drunk and much less for the quality of food. If you're looking for a bar that serves straight-from-the-freezer-to-the-fryer food, this is your place. If you're looking for a place to get a high-quality meal that you won't find elsewhere, keep looking. The bill was a little over $50. We did leave a little over a 20% tip for the waitress, as she did a good job in the front of the house. The poor decisions in the kitchen...

We came to Harry's at 5:11 p.m.By 5:39 our entrees were ordered (according to the ticket). At least 4 families were sat after us........2 families at least 30 mins after us. When I say families I mean 2 groups of 4 adults, a family of 7 and a group of 2. We were 5 adults 1 child. All of these groups were served at least 10 mins before us......one group of 4 was finished, gone and table cleared before we got our food. We asked to have our food boxed up because we had somewhere else to be at 7pm. We would also like to speak with the manager. After about 10 mins the waitress came back and said we discounted your appetizers 50%. Ok......still would like to speak with the manager. The waitress came back and said the manager Amy refuses to come out and speak to us. Now mind you.......never at one point did we raise our voices or get nasty! As we were leaving, the manager Amy comes running out and yelling at us......do you want to speak with me and we can go somewhere private. I asked why she is getting so aggressive and mean when we havent raised our voices 1 time? She continues to yell at us telling us we had already eaten our food and were ready to pay and now we complain!! I explained to her actually bo our food was still on the table in boxes with not 1 bite taken out of it! And we still had not recieved our fries. She throws her hands up in the air, continues to yell and make a scene as she walks away. Amy your manager needs some management classes. I work as a manager in the public and absolutely know this is not the way to handle things. We were perfectly willing to pay our full bill, but Amy had other plans! Good luck to your future in...