Rare Steakhouse — Restaurant in Madison

Took the family (6 of us) to this restaurant to celebrate two special occasions while in town to see our recent college grad and a rising senior.

BOTTOM LINE (in case you don’t want to comb through the details): Don’t waste your money! Service was abysmal! When paying these prices, one should expect and receive outstanding food AND service.

THE HIGHLIGHTS: • Our reservation was for 7:00 PM and we were seated by 7:02. • We were impressed that they offered us a choice of indoor or outdoor dining. The restaurant was only at half capacity so we were very comfortable to sit inside. • The hostess informed us that one of the evening’s managers (Owen) was a wine specialist (sommelier) and was available to offer suggestions should we need any. • At one point, Kate (not our assigned server) brought over three glasses of champagne to surprise our twin girls (birthday) and congratulate our guest (new job offer). The twins knew the server so this was a nice treat. • Our steaks were prepared to our liking (desired temperature) and the food was overall “good” (7 out of 10).

LOWLIGHTS: • When we were seated, the hostess indicated that Mitch would be our server. We were seated at 7:02 and finally at 7:19 my husband went up to the hostess stand to see if Mitch would be coming to our table to greet us, bring water, take orders, etc. Mitch was at the hostess stand talking to the hostess and said he would be right over. • After about five minutes, a gentleman came to the table. My husband knew it was Mitch, but unfortunately he never introduced himself to the rest of us or apologized for the delay. This set the tone for the rest of the evening. • Drinks were late, apps were late and we were not impressed with the availability of steaks (specifically, no dry-aged fillet mignon and the Delmonico was too fatty for our liking.). • After a lackluster service experience (repeated requests, spilled water and a few other mishaps) we finally requested the dessert menus at 9:08 and one menu was brought to the table at 9:26. Again, the restaurant was at half capacity so no excuse for such poor service. • We were also disappointed that at no time did one of several apparent managers, come to the table to greet us or apologize for the sub-standard service. • As we left the restaurant at 10:03, I decided to share my disappointment with a manager. When I went to the front of the restaurant to seek out a manager, I waited about three minutes at an empty hostess stand, at which point I had decided I gave enough of my time and departed.

FINAL WORD: I can appreciate at times servers are trying to give large parties plenty of time to enjoy themselves. This was not the case here. We often go to steakhouses when celebrating special events. This was our first time dining at RARE (and our first time out as an extended group since February). It will be our last visit. Aside from the poor service, we have decided we prefer the steaks at Ruth’s Chris or Mastro’s as they have better cuts of meat and a larger selection from...

I’ll be honest, as a single mom I don’t have the money to go have expensive dinners so when my boyfriend said we were going to Rare, I was so excited! I had never been but heard great things. My boyfriend had been a couple times and raved about these puff popover rolls (which I couldn’t wait to try) and the steaks.

The food was so delicious.. the service was horrible.

Reservation was at 9:30pm on Saturday. Perfect! Wasn’t at all busy. We had a male waiter. Nice guy but he did not pay us much attention. As soon as he finally came to the table to introduce himself, we ordered an app. Thank God because it took him a ridiculously long time to come back and take our order. I’m not an impatient person, especially sitting next to my dream man but what the heck!! Other servers were looking us with expressions that read, “are they being helped?” But no one came to ask what we needed. Our waiter even walked by our table a couple times, still not taking our order. No clue what the holdup was since it was late at night and there weren’t many tables and i saw plenty of waitstaff. Finally he comes over after we stared him down as to say, “hey, we’ve been waiting forever.”

Server puts in our order. Several minutes go by and we flagged down a different server to ask if we could have the popovers. Server says, “well you had to order entrees.” What?!! We did order entrees! He tells us they should be out shortly. They still hadn’t came by the food was delivered. We asked our actual server this time and he said the manager was going to bring them out but the rolls were not acceptable... I kind of don’t believe this. Especially since he came out with the popovers as soon as we inquired about them again. Those popovers though... holy delicious! I love them!

Steak cooked to perfection. Scallops cooked to perfection. Meal served in reasonable time!

Our server did not ask one time how our food was. Actually, he did not come back to check on us until we were finished. Someone refilled our water but they didn’t ask either. When our waiter finally came, he brought dessert menu (which i had asked for). Then once again, took him so long to come back that I didn’t order the dessert I wanted. Actually we flagged him down to ask for the bill.

So to sum it up... amazing food. Bad service. I’m kind of sad because this was my special night out and I would have expected top notch service. I work at a bar/restaurant serving so I have understanding when it comes to being a server but this was ridiculous..... and I really wanted that damn bananas foster.

When i save up enough money, I will come again. Hoping this was...

Very disappointing experience. We ordered drinks. My wife's on tap Spotted Cow came out without even a hint of a head and was flat. She sent it back. She ordered a Stella Artois instead. Their beer selection is poor for a restaurant of this caliber. My wife ordered another beer later into dinner which she never received. By the time our server discovered the error we had finished dinner. Things have obviously changed here. We used to split a Caesar salad prepared tableside. Our salad which we ordered split came on a small plate. We told them we asked for it to be split. While they took it back the waitress brought me an empty plate, apparently for us to split it ourselves. The waitress, when we arrived asked if we wanted regular water or sparkling. We ordered sparkling and she showed up and poured regular water which we figured she simply misunderstood. Later, halfway through the meal she showed up with sparkling water which we refused since we already had regular water. We had the 22oz.bone-in ribeye wagyu which was excellent. As usual we asked them to split a baked potato with accompaniments. One medium size potato was brought on a plate. We told them we had ordered it split between us so shortly our waitress brought it back but cut in half across instead of lengthwise. Your "oversized" sides have decreased in size and quality. Unbelievable. For desert we decided to share the rather large chocolate cake which comes with a scoop of ice cream. They brought it with one fork leaving me without a fork to eat the cake with. Before our meal they brought two puny little rolls, as they apparently no longer serve the hot popovers they used to. We were told that they were too time consuming to make. We watched management check with other diners but even though a manager picked up our credit card it was simply dropped off after they ran it with no intrest in asking about how we like our meal. It seemed as though nobody was looking after us when the waitress was not around which was a lot. She was pleasant enough but either was very overwhelmed or distracted. The whole experience (except for the wagyu) was a disaster. Rare, in our opinion is no longer the superior steakhouse...