Oscar's Restaurant & Lounge — Restaurant in Portsmouth

7/11/23

This place is located inside of the Holiday INN. It has two seating areas, lounge=bar and dining room= traditional restaurant seating. Atmosphere:looks beautiful....at first glance. If you look even a little too hard, you will see the worn down, dated decor and areas of plain old dilapitation( stains on ceiling, wallpaper peeling, cracks in drywall ect. They add white table clothes and candles, but the effect is short-lived.

Service: Our service (while slow) was very good. The young gentleman who served us was efficient, kind, and well-mannered. He was tipped accordingly, because it was obvious the delay was not his doing by the way other customers were served the items that came from the kitchen after long wait times and not items the servers were responsible for.

Food: In short, it's not true fine dining cuisine. It could be better described as "fine dining." Emphasis on the quotations. It is basic food parading as upscale with its presentation. The flavor was... ok. The appetizer we got was the southwest spring rolls. They were tasty, looked handmade, and presented nicely. The salads were run of the mill iceberg lettuce salads. The entrees(everyone's MAIN concern, lol) were subpar in flavor but very well cooked. The lovely plating and decent preparation was the food's saving grace due to the absolute lack of seasoning.

Desserts: Stay away from these. They are low quality and not worth your money. Enough said.

Drinks: This is an area of no complaint. Well priced-ish. But they are well made and taste good. Just get them at the start of your meal because they are not shy with the pour.

Pricing: It won't break the bank but it's not worth the cost of what you get in quality, but it is worth the cost in portions. The sizings were sufficient.

OVERVIEW: Don't go with high hopes true fine upscale dining as this diner did. You will leave confused and disappointed. Treat it as a trip to an SLIGHTLY more elevated AppleBee's(but with...

Update: the pie is still crazy expensive (but delicious… I wish it was terrible so I wouldn’t be tempted, but it isn’t).

The food quality is MUCH better, these days. The menu is quite large, maybe even overwhelmingly so. The weekly specials are delicious and affordable. Great, friendly service!

Original review: I’ve eaten at Oscars on several occasions and each time the atmosphere was quite nice and the service was friendly, but the menu options and food quality were dull and underwhelming. Not terrible, just...incredibly dull. Most menu items are overpriced, but one can usually expect that from a restaurant housed within a hotel; however, no one expects a small slice of pie, scratch made or not, to...

The atmosphere is great! I absolutely loved being there. However, the food is definitely premade freezer food and poor quality. It's been a long time since I've ate low quality food like that. My family and I had ate there for dinner and we all woke up with severe stomach pain. Also, I had ordered a mixed drink from their specialty menu. It was called cherry blow pop. It looked fantastic but it was bad tasting. I think it just wasn't the righ proportion. And she had added something that tasted like chocolate which didn't blend well. The place has so much potential and I was looking forward to their food and especially their drinks. I feel a...