54th Street Restaurant & Drafthouse-Rector St. — Restaurant in San Antonio

Update: Robert (the GM at 54th) responded to this review apologizing that our conversation possibly left us “dismissed or unheard” and that he absolutely wants all guests to feel comfortable and safe when dining with them. However, it is strange that he now apologizes, when his resolution to the problem was to repeatedly tell us to never return to 54th Street because there was nothing he could do to fix the problem. How was that supposed to meet any loyal customer’s expectations? He also sent a link for us to use to continue the conversation if we felt it necessary but we did not. That is where we first reported the problem to corporate and were given an auto reply then nothing further.

We left this review to make people aware of the problem and the way the general manager treats loyal customers.

Original Review: My husband and I have been 54th Street Loyalty Club members for numerous years and have a total of 191 visits. For the past 3 months when we have a weekly meal at the Rector location there have been various homeless people at the front entry begging from every customer that enters and exists the restaurant. This is uncomfortable and unsafe for customers because many homeless people have mental issues and drug addictions, which 54th Street should not want their customers exposed to. We have mentioned this to the staff and they sometimes send a manager out to ask the homeless to move on. However, each time we visited, the problem still existed. We eat out every night and this is not an issue at any other restaurant in this area or any other area of the city we dine in. We reported the problem to 54th Street Corporate in mid February. On February 18 the General Manager, Robert, called us to discuss the issue. We thought he would address the problem and have solutions on how it was being fixed. However, he stated that this was not his problem, but a citywide problem and that we needed to take it up with the City Council and the mayor of San Antonio. He said the only reason the homeless are begging at the establishment is because 54th Street is the only nice restaurant in the area which is very wrong because there are many good restaurants within 1.5 miles of there – Paesanos, Seasons 52, J Alexanders, PF Chang’s, Flemings, Chili’s and more…none of which ever have homeless people at the entryway begging from customers. After stating this to Robert, he told us to not return to his restaurant and he stated at least 4 times for us to never return – he said he was done talking to us and then he hung up on us. He was rude, condescending, argumentative and unprofessional. We have never been talked to so poorly by any restaurant staff member anywhere. We have been told by 54th Street employees that Robert is a friend of one of the owners and is very much protected so he can treat customers however he wants. We used to love having dinner there – the bar staff and servers are great, and we always left positive surveys for them. If our business is not wanted and nothing will be done about the problem, we will take our business elsewhere. Robert does not belong in any position of customer service there or anywhere – he is bad...

First and foremost. My family and I usually love going to 54th street. That being said this isn't the one I would go to. Our server started off great, friendly. Maybe a little overwhelmed. Things just get ugly from here. The plates took quite a while to come out, refills on drinks didn't happen until the meal was done. My food came out much later then the rest of the tables. I ordered a spicy chicken sandwich with onion rings. I ate two onion rings, as I was about to eat a third something fell off it. It was a chunk of raw meat. I waived or server over and quietly pointed to it. She immediately left with the plate. She returned promptly and informed us that It was a chunk of raw pork. It's important to note that no one at our table even ordered pork. She apologized, and informed us that they would be replating the food. She left and was back almost instantly with the new plate. I just couldn't bring myself to eat food that had been in contact with raw pork. So I declined it. Sometime later a manager named Robert approach the table yo apologize. He offered to make something else, but by this time everyone had finished their meals. So I declined. He left and came back to inform us that he had removed the plate from the ticket, and had also removed another entrée from the ticket. We didn't ask for this. We waited another 20 to 30 minutes before we finally received the refills we had asked for in the beginning and our ticket. Sad to say the situation in my opinion wasn't handled very well from start to finish. I won't be coming...

First and foremost I will say it’s normally pretty difficult to make my large family happy at dinner. Especially being that there are kids with us. We chose to celebrate a birthday here with 14 people the wait was about 1.5 hours which for a Friday is expected. We were sat and immediately attended to by our Server ERIC. He lets us know that he would be willing to separate our checks at the end of our dinner so we wouldn’t feel the need to pay all together. I would say Eric orchestrated our dinner perfectly to the things that were in his control. Obviously he has no control of the bar or the kitchen staff directly. He made sure that every thing came out as it was ready to avoid any cold food. Which he asked if it was okay in advance. Talk about knowing how to do your job. All in all for a large group of 14 this was the first time in a long while we didn’t have to send any thing back to the kitchen. We ordered a little bit of every thing from steaks to seafood. Every thing was cooked to the request of order to the T.

Just wanted to say that based on the performance of the staff you can tell that whoever manages this location is on top of their game. The team here has been given the needed expertise and experience to provide a nice environment to the customer which has been something lacking in recent memory of the restaurant industry.

Also just wanted to give a shout out to the young man in the bar who put the dodger game on for us !

Thank you for the...