Ella Dining Room & Bar — Restaurant in Sacramento

Was definitely a disappointing experience in terms of food and service. Atmosphere was quite nice though. Came here for birthday dinner.

Food: Had our hopes up as the small plates were very good. The lobster gnocchi was one of the best gnocchi dishes I've had with a pillowy soft gnocchi that just melted in your mouth. Excellent balance of cream, salt, and parmesan. Lobster was springy and not overcooked and rubbery. The bone marrow was also excellent with a buttery smooth texture, but also paired with a rich shredded oxtail. Bread was slightly burnt, but still acceptable. However, things started to go downhill with their take on French onion soup. Just the strangest concoction of fairly bland broth and onions. One of the best things of French onion soup is the generous portion of bread and a gratin of Gruyere that envelopes the top. Instead, they had a tiny dumpling stuffed with cheese floating in the soup which was not very good. Just an overall bad take. While the time between dishes at this point was a bit slow, it deteriorated for the mains. It took about 38 minutes until our mains arrived after the French onion soup. They were fairly mid. The Dungeness crab stuffed halibut came out lukewarm and was extremely dry. The lamb rigatoni was a bit overly salted and had a strange balance of flavors with the peppers making some bites spicy, some bites just pure salt.

Service: While starting off fairly well, the time the waitress checked on us also became very sporadic. There was no updates between the small plates and the long waiting period for the mains which was the most detrimental part. Waiting nearly 40 minutes for a main is already bad enough. Waiting 40 minutes without any service member checking in on us and assuring us our food was still being prepared/delayed was unacceptable. Also had to flag down a server for the check after the meal as we were not checked on for a while after we finished our mains. Also when trying to pick up our coats from coat check, there was no one at the front so after 5 minutes we just gave up and took our coats ourselves.

Overall, somewhat disappointing experience...

We recently celebrated my 60th birthday at Ella with our family (party of 5). I can't say enough good things about this restaurant. They deserve their Michelin star rating.

I will preface that my daughter-in-law called the day before when the babysitter for my 3-year-old grandson fell through. She wanted to make sure it would be appropriate to bring a well-behaved youngster, and they couldn't have been nicer or more welcoming.

I'll start with the service, which was exemplary from start to finish. While enjoying a round of cocktails, we ordered a bottle of GSM and they set out the appropriate glassware for that style of wine (a small detail, worth noting). However, when we were informed that our selection wasn't available, we switched to a Syrah - and this is where the details matter. Instead of leaving the large bowl wine glasses, they switched to the taller wine glasses appropriate for a Syrah. This is a restaurant that knows its wine and how to serve it. Another note about the pleasant service - our server intuitively brought out our grandson’s meal first. I give the service here an A++.

Onto the food - we shared several appetizers, including the bone marrow, chicken liver mousse and a fantastic heirloom tomato salad. All were outstanding. We opted to share the 48 oz. Tomahawk Steak between the four of us, with a side of roasted broccoli. Every single item was excellent.

We enjoyed an after-dinner drink called Donnafugata from Sicily, and it was the perfect ending to a perfect milestone birthday dinner.

It's also worth noting that the atmosphere and ambience here is quite beautiful, and even with a full restaurant on a Saturday evening, the acoustics were perfect (in a loft-like space, the addition of the floor to ceiling white curtains and tall service station did an excellent job of absorbing the noise). Nice to not have to shout across the table to your dining mates.

It's the little things that make a Michelin-starred restaurant, and Ella more than earned that special accolade.

Sigh I only wish we had an Ella outpost in Dallas! But next time we're in the Sacramento area, we will...

Let us start off with the ambiance of the restaurant. Considering that it was a New Year's Eve celebration dinner, you could definitely feel the excitement and the fun energy not only from the maitre d but also from the servers and the people at the bar. We were greeted by the maitre d who then introduced us to the floor manager of the night. He was very knowledgeable about the different courses we were about to have and also gave us compliments on the bottle of Caymus wine that we brought to partaking as a group.

Roxanne provide amazing service the entire time we were there. She was constantly checking in on us, made sure that we had our drinks always full, and asked us each time she brought he next course or took away the prior course how everything tasted and if it was to our liking.

Okay regarding the five course meal that we had. I will say that the number one item that we all enjoyed and hands down wanted more of was the entree course which was the braised beef short rib. That piece of me was so tender and so soft that it literally felt like it melted in your mouth. Everything that accompanied it was superb especially the little crispy potatoes that added a nice crunch as you enjoyed the meal.

The first two items the Island Creek oyster in lobster bisque or both good. The oyster however felt like it lost its charm because the preserved Meyer lemon left a little bitterness on the tongue after you bit into it. The lobster bisque was very nice a little extra salt would have kicked up the flavors a little bit more and maybe one little extra biscuit because I had some bisque left over that I really wanted to sop up that soup with.

A second contender was definitely the pan roasted duck breast as it had a great taste the one call out would have been for the outside just to be a little bit more crispy so you have that nice crunch as you bit into the meat and maybe a little bit more sprinkling of flaky salt to really enhance the bit of fat that was on the meat.

Overall this is the second time we've done and years Eve celebration at Ella and we were not...