Char Steakhouse and Oyster Bar — Restaurant in Springfield

Extremely Disappointed in Food Preparation & Owner's & Manager's Response

Be very cautious in choosing to dine at the CHAR Steakhouse & Oyster Bar. Management doesn't want to or care to know when things are not going well. Here's my experience...including SIX attempts to meet with the owner after dining there.

We had our first experience at CHAR on 2/7/2019. The dinner for two was $190; the steaks were wonderfully prepared to order and the service was good. Just two weeks later (2/21/2019) we returned. What a mistake!

6:45 pm--called for reservations...hostess said they had nothing available for a party of two. Asked to speak to manager. After being passed from one manager to another, the Acting General Manager, Matt, said he could certainly seat a party of two and we should come right on in.

7:15 pm--arrived and was promptly seated. There were approximately six open tables in the main dining room when we arrived and no guests followed after us for some time.

7:20-ordered drinks and appetizers:

1. 12 bacon-wrapped stuffed dates at $1.50 each ($18 total)...look out, they have changed the item so it is now filled with plain cream cheese instead of the traditional and more tasty goat cheese.
2. shrimp cocktail ($16); excellent shrimp but served with little cocktail sauce. It took nearly 45 minutes to get the appetizers so we were eating our appetizers at 8:00 pm.

8:05 pm--ordered entrees:

1. Grilled Caesar Salad. The grilled Caesar salad was great! My guest was served salad at 8:20 pm and finished with dinner at 8:40 pm.

2. 8 oz Filet Mignon ($35) medium well with potatoes and mushrooms. The steak had to be prepared FOUR TIMES for the kitchen to get it right. I finished the dinner an hour and fifteen minutes after my guest finished the salad. We checked out at 9:50 pm being served a check for the full amount of the dinner ($80 + tax = $86.48). No apologies, no credit, nothing. I went ahead and paid the bill and left a $18.52 (23%) tip for our server and said I was shocked and disappointed the manager didn't attempt to make the billing right for the nearly 3 hour dinner, delay of my meal in comparison to my guest's meal, and the FOUR attempts for a steakhouse to properly prepare an 8 oz filet mignon to medium well done. I asked for the owner--I was told he had left the evening. I then asked again for the manager, Matt. The manager never came out to discuss how he chose to handle the billing--he was busy "checking staff out for the evening" according to our server; instead he had the server, Jared, present a new bill for $41.08. I had already paid the $86.48 bill and the server had collected the bill already; I was so frustrated that the manager didn't come to the table that I asked for the owner's business card and told our server I would personally visit with Mike Jalili, the restaurant owner, and address the whole situation--HE could make the billing adjustment when we met.

9:50 pm--received and paid full amount of check; asked for manager after paying bill.

I went home and sent Mike Jalili, owner, an email requesting a face-to-face meeting with him to discuss my experience on 2/22/2019, 2/26/2019, and 2/27/2019. He finally responded on 2/27/2019 by saying "my cook messed up." I sent him 3 more emails for a meeting and he has passively blown them off. I don't think he wants feedback or to make the bill right either.

Beware of what can happen if you don't have a good...

Our first experience was perfect. Amazing server and great food. All I can say is seven months has significantly changed the service.

We visited tonight hoping for the same delightful service to celebrate my birthday. The service was lackluster and comparable to what you might expect of late night dining at a Steak and Shake. After waiting an eternity for the server to finally make his way to our table, he paid no attention whatsoever to our order, even turning his back on my husband to chat with a busboy three times while we tried to place an order for a pair of steaks. The server didn’t even ring in our correct steak order (as evidenced by the receipt).

Our steaks the first time were absolutely deplorable. My husband ordered a medium rare steak and received an extremely dried out carcass of a well done steak. I had ordered mine medium; however the steak arrived in a blue rare state (aka barely even browned on the outside and completely raw and bloody inside). It took again an eternity for someone to assist us in having the steaks cooked to the appropriate temp as ordered. My steak was simply tossed back on the grill and brought back to me. It was charred on the outside but closer to a medium temp inside. Luckily enough, I was too hungry to care about the charcoaled outside at that point.

The server never even realized our steaks were not properly cooked as he hadn’t bothered to visit our table since plopping down the plates. He actually dropped off dessert menus right in the middle of the bus boy bringing out my re-heated steak.

My husband’s steak was still not the appropriate temp after re-firing. It was the poorest example of a cooked steak I have ever seen. Something to be expected from a backyard grilling novice on his first ever attempt at grilling a steak, not even remotely the quality of a fine dining restaurant who supposedly specializes in their steaks. My husband’s steak had four separate temps; parts were bone dry and very much well done. Other bits were raw and clearly very rare; still more bits were a medium well temp with just the faintest sliver of pink running through, and a single small chunk was actually cooked medium rare. Considering we had already spent an hour and a half waiting on the steaks, he ate his steak and asked for the check.

As a final display of deplorable service, as we had already paid the check and were filling in the tip amount, the server tried to suggest he could bring a free small chocolate cake or something for our “anniversary.” He had asked several times previously what occasion we were celebrating, and had been advised it was my birthday each time. Just a last ditch effort to recover a good tip with the offer of a freebie dessert after truly lackluster and utterly disappointing service.

I doubt we will ever visit Char again. For the exorbitant prices, one would hope to receive food and service of a higher quality than some sad little run down...

I really wanted to have a great meal for my wife's 55th birthday meal. We eat at Char about 4-5 times a year. We have, in the past, had great experiences and only one other time have we had a not so good experience. The last time we were here we had the best hostess and had absolutely awesome food! Earlier this week I made a reservation for my wife's 55th birthday. I added in the comments of the reservation that we were celebrating a birthday. When we arrived we again were asked if we were celebrating anything today and reconfirmed it was my wife's birthday. Our hostess was very nice and we received good service in the beginning. We ordered wine, an appetizer of oysters and asked the hostess if we could have some pop overs (both my wife and mine favorites). We received our wine and everything was going great until I asked for a second glass of wine. This is when things took a turn. I waited about 20 minutes for my refill to arrive. We had still not received the pop overs even though the hostess said they would be out anytime. We ordered the seabass for our entrees along with splitting a ceasar salad. Instead of receiving our salad we got new silverware in anticipation of our entrees. One hour had passed as of now. We had not received our salads, nor the popovers. Finally our "bread" arrived. It was their standard bread basket (not popovers). I told our hostess that they were missing the mark on my wife's birthday experience. She said she would take our last wine order off our bill. Then our entrees arrived, no ceasar. Then just as I stuck a fork in my entree, our salad appeared along with an apology. Unfortunately our seabass tasted very "fishy". I have had seabass many different times at many different restaurants and it's never tasted fishy. I believe our hostess did all she could to apologize and even brought us a desert that they packaged up for us (at no charge). No birthday sparkler (we have had this at all other birthday celebrations). I typically really love this restaurant and know for whatever reason the kitchen was not hitting on all cylinders tonight, including a bad tasting seabass. This experience will not keep me from coming again but for the price of dinner here this is a big splurge for us, not a routine place to go for a quick bite as we are not wealthy folks. Maybe we just expect more given our past experiences and the cost of meals here? Maybe we just expected too much? I dont know, I will let you judge. I did add the wine back into the total bill and tipped as I always do, well. Hopefully things will be better on our next special occasion? I really wanted to have a nice birthday experience for my wife's...