Spencer's for Steaks and Chops — Restaurant in San Jose

Hostess greeted us warmly and seated us at a great table. We picked our wine from an extensive wine list and ordered an appetizer. After that, our server disappeared for a while. By not taking our entree order until much later, we felt forgotten and the dining experience was totally disjointed. We could quickly see that the restaurant was understaffed and no one apologized or even acknowledged the issues. I place blame squarely on the management, not the server. She cut corners to make things work and we basically ended up spending less than we otherwise would have while on vacation. Plus the hotel was running a special discount promotion for guests at the DoubleTree Hotel, but the restaurant didn't offer it to us, so the check had to be recalculated at the end after the server had already determined we wished to charge the meal to our room. The manager never cracked a smile all evening, he offered no apology - therefore our experience at Spencer's was considerably diminished. Most of the clientele appeared to be business folks on their corporate expense accounts - I'm guessing none of them...

Spencer's is located inside DoubleTree hotel. Ambience was ok but too plain. Dim light w/table cloth & comfortable seats. No flowers/plants nor anything extravagant, other than paintings that remind me of the ones at BJ's restaurants. It wasn't busy even though it was Friday evening around 7:30pm. Price is not bad considering the portions & quality of the entrees. Our ribeye, scallop+collosal shrimp were perfectly cooked & delicious. My bf liked the sauteed spinach but I didn't because it was bitter due to having too much wine in it. The hashbrown was not bad. For some reason the romaine lettuce in the Caesar salad was kind of bitter so I only ate a bit of it. The sourdough bread was fresh & warm. I prefer French bread though. Our server gave us good friendly service except he forgot what we had ordered & had to come back 5 mins later to ask us & write it down. Luckily, it wasn't busy so our entrees still came right after we finished most of our bread & caesar salad. We were stuff after that so we didn't get to try any desserts. We took the...

The good was reasonably good, but hard for one who didn't eat shrimp or red meat. The Caesar salad's dressing wasn't tangy and that's a huge accomplishment, I really dislike an acidic back taste. They have sushi but very limited and if you're going to sell sushi please tell the staff that cucumbers rolled up with rice and seaweed is "kappa maki." I asked if they had it, the server said no. Then I saw someone else with some. "That's cucumber maki, not kappa maki." But for what it was, Spencer's was super expensive, like equal to a high end San Francisco place rather than a steak place in a hotel. I can't speak to the quality of the steak but considering it was the hotel's primary option, what I was able to get out of it wasn't...