The Branded Steer | Wood-Grilled Rotisserie & Saloon — Restaurant in Oak Creek

I cannot stress enough: STAY AWAY. Honestly, even McDonalds would have been better than this fiasco. We are two coming for dinner. First, we are greeted by a gaggle of smokers at the door, like right at the door, we have to ask them to move so we can enter. 🙄 Anyway, we are seated, server is nice (about the only saving grace the whole night), we order drinks–Tito’s & soda/seltzer and a rum and Diet Coke (but of course, they only have Pepsi)–I take one sip of Tito’s & soda and it has a weird kinda sweet, kinda sickening taste. From working & managing restaurants/bars for years, I know this taste means that the bartenders don’t take apart, clean, and soak the soda guns every night; because vodka & soda water shouldn’t taste like anything. 🤷🏽‍♀️GROSS. We should have left at this point. Order appetizer–onion straws–and it comes out fast enough and is really good, because it’s fried onions and of course it’s good. Decide to order porterhouse, cooked medium, to split with mashed potatoes, steamed veggies and French onion soup. Soup comes out, it’s okay, nothing special, edible (which is giving a lot of credit). The rest of the meal comes out, almost 25 minutes after we order, and it looks real good on the plate. As we start eating, I notice the strip portion of the porterhouse is definitely well done, but the filet part is more medium, kinda medium well. Whatever, I’m hungry and I want to eat something. Everything else on the plate is awful, the mashed potatoes are dry, unsalted and just gross. The vegetables are a peppers, squash and mushroom mix, also gross, overly soft and over salted. During this, we also ask the server for a wild cherry Pepsi. Well, news to us they must have been out of wild cherry Pepsi, so naturally instead of just telling us they are out, they take it upon themselves to just add grenadine to Pepsi. and of course they also don’t even bother to stir it in, because once we got to the bottom, we got a mouthful of sugary, grenadine syrup. However, like I said, service was good, so we still left a good tip. It wasn’t her fault the food was absolutely terrible and almost inedible.

Long story short, go somewhere, anywhere, else; like the Tavern on 13th (inside...

Have lived a few blocks away for many years and I finally remembered to get them on the list for the monthly dinners with Mom. My turn to pick and pay, so off we went.

The atmosphere is cozy and lodge-like - withOUT the animals. Lots of wood, large bar area separate from the dining area, large screen TVs for watching whatever sporting even is on, but not so many that they distract from conversation or would put them in a sports bar category.

The service was mixed. On the one hand we were told they were short-staffed yet there were multiple servers with few customers at the time we were there. On the other, though our server was extremely friendly and accommodating, the times between seeing her were pretty long. Mostly positive though, and she brought us for whatever we asked.

The food was just delicious. We started with the Saddle Bags, Mom had the Philly Cheesesteak and I had the Lone Star - both of us had the Steak Fries. We agreed the Saddle bags were real good. She enjoyed her cheese steak, though she said it was not what she was used to as there were ingredients she doesn't usually see on one. She did like it though. The Lone Star was awesome. The boneless. skinless chicken breast was ginormous. The BBQ sauce was good and bacon (though should have been crisp) balance out the overall flavor. Along with half my sandwich, fries, and splitting the remaining saddle bags, I also took a slice of turtle cheesecake home. It was disappointing. It did not look anything like the picture on their menu, and the cheesecake itself was mealy. Not at all the creamy texture you expect from a cheesecake.

We also each had a drink. Mom had a chocolate martini and I had the strawberry margarita. Mom said the martini was perfect. The margarita on the other hand had zero flavor. Just tasted like a red slushie with no sugar. No strawberry. No tequila. Very disappointing, especially for the price.

Overall a...

Not that great. Branded Steer used to be pretty good in the past, but the last couple times were lackluster. The food quality just isn't there. The details of every dish made it clear that the chief lacked enthusiasm and were void of any glimmer of passion in quality, or even presentation. The Cajun burger I ordered was a premade patty of mid grade meat, it was firm, dry and lacked flavor. The flavor that was present (and took over the entire dish) was the copious amount of powdered "cajan" flavor shake that the entire burger was coated in. It was hard to eat because every bite felt like I was pouring cajan season salt into my mouth along with it. The soups tasted like they died in the crock.. The previous day and may have even been resurrected from the walk in when we ordered them. The temperature alone made it clear they did a short stint in the microwave shortly before hitting the pass. The steak on my wives salad was a bit "off" and there was no was it cooked to order.. Left me wondering if it also was premade and microwaved before joining the bowl of limp dirty tasting greens (which were slathered in some sort of food service grade ranch type of dressing that also tasted a little rancid). The service was good, the place was clean. But we had 9 people at our table and the speed at which everything came out was very suspect. No doubt a lot of microwave reheating was going on back there. What a shame. Better off going to Applebee's (which isn't saying much for...