Daniel's Broiler — Restaurant in Seattle

We went to Daniel’s Broiler on Lake Union a couple days ago. When we were given the check, we discovered Daniel’s Broiler had added a mandatory 20% surcharge to the entire bill, excluding tax.

Neither myself or my wife saw, or heard, any mention of a surcharge until we received the check at the end of the meal.

I wondered what Daniel's Broiler does with their 20% mandatory surcharge on food and drink? This is what Daniel's Broiler said in response to a Google review two years ago, "Yes, a 20% service charge is included and 100% of this service charge is retained by Schwartz Brothers Restaurants."

And, in 2020, Daniel’s Broiler said in response to a review in Yelp, “As for the service fee, we strive to be an employer of choice and our servers are paid a base wage and a separate commission based on their sales”.

I have no idea how much our server will be “commissioned” via Daniel's Broiler, based upon Daniel’s Broiler’s “separate commission”. Nor, have I any idea of what “base wage” amounts to, as Daniel’s Broiler says they pay their servers.

So, it seems to me, if I want to be sure our server receives his/her share of a 20% tip, which is possibly apportioned to other positions as well, such as maybe chefs, front desk personnel, and others, then I’ll have to add that 20% tip to the same bill that already includes Daniel’s Broiler’s 20% mandatory surcharge.

If I ever go back to Daniel’s Broiler on Lake Union, I’ll know that every item I see on their menu will cost 50% more than what the menu says the item costs, presuming Daniel’s Broiler doesn’t increase their 20% mandatory surcharge, my paying a 20% tip, and a 10% tax rate.

First, it was resort fees. Now, it’s restaurant surcharges. What’s next? Gas stations? Grocery stores? Imagine, the posted sign at a gas station says $4.00/gallon. You fill your pickup with 20 gallons and expect to pay 80 bucks. But the people who make the pricing decisions at the gas station have a surprise waiting for you, a 50% surcharge.

Imagine the executives at the gas station saying afterwards to you, “Oh, you didn’t know about our mandatory 50% surcharge? I’m so sorry.” And then imagine, the resort executives, and the restaurant executives saying to themselves, we need to raise our surcharges to compensate for the surcharges others are imposing on us because of the surcharges we are imposing on them.

I'm not saying any of this about other industries creating surcharges because of what the hotel and restaurant industries are doing is actually happening, but when resort fees started popping up, it didn't occur to me that restaurants would do something which I consider similar to what hotels did. So, why would I expect the process to stop now?

And, so it goes. Life in America....

Four of us went for a birthday dinner 10/8/22 & were quite disappointed. Our server was inexperienced & clearly nervous the whole time, but very sweet & trying hard. When we go to certain restaurants, like Daniel’s & spend $800, we expect a level of service & food. Service was slow, dirty dishes were left on our table for long periods of time even with our server & busser coming to the table & us stacking & placing the dishes on the side of the table. Two of our four steaks were over cooked. My husband had his remade as it’s expensive & wasn’t served how he ordered it, so he sat without food the entire time the rest of us ate. We understand as we cook steaks often and know it’s easy to sometimes overcook one, but it ruined the experience. I had to ask for the vegetable side he ordered to be brought out warm with his recooked steak. So he had to wait longer for his veggie side once he finally got his steak & potatoes back. Our server did bring him a scoop of sorbet to tide him over while we all ate our dinners 😂 The sorbet was delicious (guava lime), but not what he wanted when he was hungry & watching us eat. They didn’t offer to discount his meal, comp a drink or anything. The toppings for my baked potato didn’t come out with my meal so I had to wait till we were checked on to ask for them. When our sever brought the serving bowls of toppings out, she couldn’t get the butter off the serving spoon so she spread the restaurant serving spoon across my plate, that I’d been eating off for several minutes. She did the same with the sour cream. These spoons and bowls are what they serve the potato toppings from for every table. That’s gross and should be a huge no no now since Covid, c’mon! I wondered how many eaten off plates that spoon had spread across that day! Then we sat for way too long after dinner & nobody offered us a dessert menu. I asked another server & she brought us the menus. Then our server came out with their complimentary birthday sundae, for our birthday girl, before even asking any of us if we would like to order dessert, or even see a menu. So we all had a few bites of the sundae, but would’ve preferred to order our own desserts. Two of us ordered Piedmontese filets & they were not as tender or lean as we expected. I grew up going to Daniel’s at different locations & have appreciated the great food & service for over 20 years of my adult life, but the last two times have been disappointing. Our bill last night did not align with the quality of food or service we received. Sadly, I’m not at all interested in going back again now. We can get better service elsewhere, make better drinks and cook better...

I took our family for dinner there on June 30, 2013 to celebrate my wife's birthday. Our party of 10 included 7 adults and 3 children 12 years of age and younger. We had high expectations for an outstanding meal. Our expectations were not met. We were seated immediately in a room that had no other customers in it. The room was so cold we thought that we were being chilled along with the aged beef. We were told that there was no way to control the temperature; it was either on or off. Apparently one of these new devices called a thermostat were not in use in the restaurant.

We waited about 15 minutes for a waiter to show up to take our drink order and move the meal forward. The children were quite patient, yet you want to move things along when you have kids at the table. Drinks arrived and the waiter starting reviewing the menu. He kept trying to up-sell us on the more expensive items, which became annoying. I guess when you have a guaranteed 20% tip, you want the bill to be as high as possible.

Now for the food. To sum it up good but not great, which is a disappointment for a first class, prime meat steak house. My wife is a rare steak person and what arrived was a medium-well steak, which the waiter took right back to be replaced. The problem with that is by the time the new steak comes out everyone has mostly finished their meal and it is hard for the person with the new piece of meat to properly enjoy their meal. In addition, the steak was still not as rare as my wife likes it. I had fresh halibut as did one of my sons-in-law. Unfortunately it was overcooked and very dry. My other son-in-law's steak was cooked to different levels of doneness throughout the steak. My wife's lobster tail was dry and tough. We know lobster well from living in New England for many years.

Most of our party enjoyed their meal, yet for a steak restaurant who makes a point to tell you about the level of doneness to a fault and then to not cook a steak properly is hard to understand. We were not advised very well by the server in that we took home more than we ate, which is a clear indication that we over-ordered and were not cautioned about it. Once again, the all-mighty gratuity won out.

This was our last first to Daniel's. There are several places in Seattle that deliver well on prime steak and do a better job getting food...