Iron Chest Steakhouse — Restaurant in Poncha Springs

In town for our wedding anniversary and a visit to the hot springs (if you haven't been to Mt. Princeton you're missing out), we decided to skip our usual local haunts for our anniversary dinner and try a new place.

We selected the place based on never having eaten here, reviews and owner review replies.

I totally now understand another reviewer stating they would drive 100+ miles to return because damn it so would I. Hopping that far is just too far for this bunny.

We had no idea this place even existed as its tucked in a small plaza in the little town of Poncho Springs located between Buena Vista and Salida Colorado.

We were seated immediately and initially I felt overdressed but by the end of the night we had ballgowns, us in our anniversary duds and those in jeans and hoodies.

The place is a unique atmosphere almost as if urban store front, steampunk, and taxidermist had a baby, but honestly it works. If you have a problem with hunting heads/taxidermy staring at you as you dine upon the food chain, they are part of, then might not be the spot for you. But I found the decor pleasant and fun, and it was almost a theme over the walls and tables, between the heads, fresh flowers and dead candles. I always say if something works go for it.

Our order was taken right away, and salads came out really fast, as someone who would sleep in the kitchen with all my toys if my husband would let me instead of just cooking and writing my blog, I'd say this is a scratch kitchen.

I did the prime rib special done medium with the au jus, smothered with carnalized mushrooms and onions. Prime rib is one of my specialty dishes and favorites to eat. This was spot on. The flavors danced over your tastebuds with a culinary explosion. I paired it with a baked potato which was light and fluffy and the perfect butter/ sour cream ratio.

My husband tried the ribeye medium, it came out rare-ish almost on the side of mooing field puppy. We flagged a staff member, and they rushed it right on back and plopped that slab of field puppy back on, and the chef brought it out shortly later to my husband personally so the reviews about slow service or under/overcooked or flavorless food make me wonder if the customer(s) mentioning issues thought to mention the said issues and allow staff to fix them.

We honesty were going to skip desert we don't have huge appetites but when she said the hand pies were made and brought in by a local Amish community, we got one of each flavor. I haven't had a strawberry rhubarb hand pie since I graduated HS and hopped out of Pennsylvania. My husband tried the blackberry one.

OMG! It should be a food felony to leave without having one of the hand pies!

I can't wait to return and try all the tasty menu items and enjoy the...

This place was recommended to my parents and I when we were in Salida overnight last week. The reviews also looked promising, so we decided to try it. First red flag, looking back now, was when the waitress told us the soup of the day, broccoli and gouda, she also said that "they didn't have any of the other soups, so don't bother looking at them on the menu". Okay. I get you sometimes run out of things, but all but one soup? And to phrase it like that was weird. So we order, I get a filet and the soup, my mom gets the soup, and my dad gets a ribeye. It seemed to take a long time for the food to come out, another family that sat down after us got their food before us. When it did finally come out, disappointment all around. My filet was dry, the soup could have been good, if it had broccoli in it. But there was almost no broccoli, a lot of carrots, celery, and possibly onions though. And it was very thin. But my dad's ribeye was the worst, it was RAW. Not, rare, raw ( He ordered it medium-well). And it was cold. Clearly it had only been on the grill long enough for the outside to brown. Almost as if the cooks got his ribeye mixed up with another order that had just come in, even though the restaurant wasnt very busy that night. My dad told the waitress and she took it back. About 5 minutes later she brought out a new one. This one was slightly better. My dad at what he could, but there was still about 1/2 the steak that was rare. The waitress offered to take that one back, but we were hungry, and didn't want to sit there all night waiting for the cooks to learn how to cook steaks. The steak should have been taken off the bill entirely, but in the end we got 20% taken off the bill, which I guess was better than nothing. If you are going to call yourself a "steakhouse", you need to get cooks who are experienced with steaks. Steaks are a more specialized food, and require specialized training, its not the same as flipping burgers. Editing this review after going back and reading previous reviews. It looks like people have had similar issues that we had, going back almost a year! And three things stand out to me: 1) peoples steaks and burgers are almost always either over done, or extremely under done. 2) the owners response to the reviews say that they will use the review as a training point for their staf, but clearly they haven't. And 3) yes, we get that things are pricey now, and your prices are in line with the cost of everything else, and no place can be 100% perfect. But, if the food were actually good, and cooked correctly, we would be ok with paying the prices. It doesnt seem like you have made any effort to make the food and services comparable...

I don’t want to be a negative review because we need good restaurants! BUT- this was our second time going because I’d really liked the pork tenderloin the first visit, although each time it needed salt. This time I asked for some onion and the waitress came back saying the chef was adding grilled onions and it would be $1.50 more. I told our waitress to forget about it and that I liked raw onion, which she said she could do for $1.50 more. But, I’m not paying $1.50 extra for a sliver of onion. While it’s a decent tenderloin, it could be much better. It needs seasoned with some salt, chef. I added salt 3x. It came out with no sauce and the menu clearly says it’s served with mustard. The first time it had a good stone ground mustard on the side and this time I had to wait 5 minutes for some mustard and it was a near-empty small bottle of yellow mustard. By then my sandwich was cold and I feel like our waitress took offense because I asked for the mustard. But, who serves a sandwich with zero sauce? It was served with mixed greens that had at least 5 slimy pieces in it-and I wouldn’t serve that to my own family-so why is it being served? Our waitress never came back and asked us how our food was. My husband got the chicken parmesan dinner and he absolutely hated the sauce. It’s an extremely non-traditional pink sauce. The pasta was also drowning in the sauce. He had me taste it, but I couldn’t eat more than a bite. Just not good. I have seen reviews saying another thought it was good, but man our experience was just that the sauce was not palatable at ALL and the pasta had been drowned in it. It was not a busy night and there were no refills on our drinks, either. Worthy of noting is that one of the cooks in the kitchen (young man with dark brown hair, green bandana headband) was eating/snacking on something in the corner near where we were seated and every single time he’d put his fingers all the way in his mouth, then go back to whatever he was working on. Since we were sat by the kitchen and it’s open, this was extremely off-putting. I can only hope he wasn’t prepping food. Very disappointed this time around and for a pricey dinner, all aspects of both the quality of food coming out, plus the service still need some work. What’s funny is one of the reviews shows a pic of the tenderloin served with some red onion. It’s going to be a while before we try it again. We need good restaurants in the area to go to, so it might help to have the chef ask people how there food is while it’s still in this...