Riverfront Steakhouse — Restaurant in North Little Rock

It hurts to make this review but it needs to be made. I’ve been coming here to Riverfront Steakhouse for over a decade to enjoy what has been the tastiest, and highest quality steak in Arkansas that I’ve had. The service has also been second to none in the past.

Which leads me to my review of my dinner tonight with my wife for her birthday. If you’ve never eaten here or at a higher end steakhouse before, stop reading.

First off, we weren’t asked if we were celebrating any special occasions. Not a huge deal but it’s customary. After being seated promptly, we met our waiter about 10 minutes later. They were not busy. He was very new here as he stated up front. He filled our drinks, took our order and brought us rolls. He checked on us 20-30 minutes later before our food was brought out. Both of our drinks were empty for the majority of the time. Food arrives, wife got governors cut filet (medium well)with loaded baked potato. Hers was cooked perfectly if she had ordered her medium but she didn’t. She still ate it and loved it. I ordered surf and turf which consisted of governors cut(medium rare) and lobster tail with a side of the Mac. Began to cut the steak and realized it was way undercooked. It was cooked between rare and blue. Not what I wanted and was a little upsetting. More so upsetting because there was nobody to tell that it wasn’t cooked right for another 10-15 minutes. Once the waiter returned I expressed to him my disappointment in both of our steaks. Told him I was not paying for this. He was respectful and understanding. He grabbed his manager to take a look.

The manager came over without making eye contact, looking back and forth at our steaks and asked if there was a problem with them. I explained to him that this was severely undercooked and I did not want it. He offered to cook another one. I told him no I didn’t want one. He left and never came back. He sat at the front in his chair like he had the whole night. This is not how a manager at a prime steakhouse should act. Maybe a manager at a fast food restaurant. Well not even chick fil a actually. The waiter asked about my Max that I had not eaten and I told him I lost my appetite. He was kind enough to take it off the bill.

Overall review- Manager was very unprofessional and careless. Waiter was awful but very respectful, understanding, and professional. Maybe there was a lack of training if it was the responsibility of this manager. Cook- do better

Will never spend my money here again. This needs to be fixed.

Manager did not give his name. My description of him would be a bigger guy, tall with a big...

This place is fine if you are going as a casual restaraunt-goer, potentially 2-3 people. (If $50 per person is an acceptable "casual dining" price for you and your family). The salad bar is excellent. The main courses are about Texas Roadhouse quality, not bad.

If you are planning a special occasion meal with a planned reservation, find another place in LR. Please. We reserved a time multiple weeks prior for 8 people, and it was the worst dining experience I have ever experienced. I was very embarrassed to have out of town family be subjected to 3+ hours of terrible service. I am 8 months pregnant, and about halfway through the night, I sincerely wanted to leave to get fast food and salvage the rest of the evening. The server was so callous and did not apologize once for multiple issues throughout the night that are too numerous to describe in detail here (one highlight was spilling a soda all over the table, me and my husband and did not seem to care or apologize at all and barely bringing anything to assist us in cleaning it up), no one in our party once complained, which seemed to make her angrier and treat us even worse. She did bring us a single dessert to split amongst the 8 people of our party, she kind of plopped it down and ran away again. I'm assuming she knew she gave us such terrible service about 30 minutes into the meal that she just figured there would be no reason to come back again or attend to us at all, as she did not take our order until about 1 hr after we got there, did not refresh waters/drinks, give us updates or apologize for the wait for the food etc. Oh, she did bring us a GIANT and disgusting looking bowl of butter (like literally, probably 1 pound of it smeared onto a bowl with some cheese) and basically threw it down in front of my husband without explanation of what it was. 😂 It sat there for about 1 hr before our food came to us collecting condensation and melting, it was so disgusting to look at.

My father paid for the meal and of course left 20% tip for the hundreds of dollars we spent, I would have not been so generous. Multiple managers checked on other tables, but never came to ours to ask how we were,

Some ideas for other places to eat that would provide superior service and even better dining experience to bring guests in LR would be: Samantha's Tap Room, Brood and Barley, Delicious Temptations for breakfast.

Edit: Since management has not bothered to comment on my review at all, I would love to add additional details and add we were there about 3.5 hours and feared it would close by the time we got our food....

Unfortunately i cant leave 0 stars. Especially about the service & food! When they lost "fine dining" on their website please know its far from that! Its not worth the $180 we spent for 3 people & 1 "salad bar"! Samantha was the name of our horrible server, to say she was rude would be an upgrade to the way she treated us! They didn't tell us upon making our reservations that they'd be on a limited menu! It was only large cuts of steak on the menu. They asked if we was celebrating anything I explained we were, they assured us they would so something special for it and acknowledge it. They did NOTHING! The server, Samantha didnt even offer us a drink/wine menu. We had to stop her and ask if 3 of them could order drinks. Only thing she offered me (the nondrinker) was water. She didn't ask if we wanted an appetizers. She just wanted us to order our meal. I asked what side come with the entrées she snapped my head off and said "NONE NOTHING COMES WITH IT" i said ohok i didn't know she then snapped its all separate. I said ok. At this point i wanted to leave but we were there celebrating my son & daughter-in-laws 1yr anniversary. So i sat there. I ordered a side of zucchini because the large cuts of steaks were too much. They got the meal for 2. The fries were so soaked in so much hunks of salt they couldn't eat them, the Mashed potatoes had so much butter it was in a pool of butter. My husband's steak was so fatty it was more of a 8oz steak instead. My side of zucchini was soaked in butter or grease and wasn't even cooked, it was cold! The salad bar was half empty and not appealing! The rolls they serve were horrendous. Hard as a brick, smashed and just dried out hunks of old yeast. They had some random guy playing music & singing. It was very off-putting. You dont have some random "busker" in a fine dining place. They sat us in a booth and i literally was sat so close to the people next to us that we should have just been eating on the same table. The "fine dining" restaurant had cartoon paintings of dogs. People in tshirts & shorts, the server couldn't even wear a shirt that fits cause it was busting open and you could see her bra & breasts. When i spoke with the manager about these issues/concerns he said "ohok thanks" Please go somewhere else. McDonald's would have...