Prime 55 Restaurant and Lounge — Restaurant in St. Louis

The food was awful. This restaurant ripped us off. Worst shrimp and grits I've ever had. Out of everything we wanted. ONE OF THE WORST RESTAURANTS IN ST LOUIS.

I'll preface the rest of this by saying our waitress was nice, she was attentive, and we could tell she was trying her best, however, the kitchen or the restaurant in general did not allow her to be able to actually give us good service.

First, we waited about an hour to have our food ordered. We were told the kitchen was backlogged and they were going to wait to take our order. Not a huge issue. However, we wanted to order breakfast, but by the time they finally allowed us to order food, we were told that we could no longer order from the breakfast menu.

Because of the change from breakfast to lunch the shrimp and grits went from $17 on the breakfast menu to $23 on the lunch menu, so now we were forced to pay $6 extra for the fans item because it was no longer order 'breakfast time.' More on this later....

Next, they were out of SO MANY ITEMS. No burrata, no bailey's Irish cream, no kalua, no chicken wings, no chicken for chicken and beingets, no lobster French fries, and the list goes on and on. Seemed like everything we tried to order they were out of. I ordered a glass of water with my procecco and it took almost AN HOUR AND A HALF to get water because they claimed they were OUT OF WATER GLASSES. I told them I'd drink ice water out of a coffee mug or wine glass... anything, I was dehydrated and needed water. How the F can you be "out of water glasses"????

With the extremely limited selection of food to order from, I ordered shrimp and grits. Huge mistake. It was awful. The description says it includes creamy grits, turkey bacon and micro basil. Welp. It was literally plain grits with plain shrimp. Only seasoned with copious amounts of salt. Shrimp was extremely fishy in flavor and salty. Almost inedible. There was only one small 1x.5 piece of bacon hidden in the grits. That was apparently the 'bacon. Then one sad grape tomato for garnish. The grits was not creamy. In fact they stuck together like a patty because the grits was so dry. No hint of basil. No seasoning. It was literally only unseasoned shrimp with unseasoned grits with a ton of salt. After waiting over two hours for my food I ate it even though it was garbage.

There were 6 of us, and they said they could not split the bill. It's GD 2022, everything is computerized. I have no idea why the F a bill can't be split. Then the bill came.... the shrimp and grits that had been $17 on the breakfast menu and became $23 because it was now "lunch menu" was charged to us as $26. 3 of us ordered shrimp and grits, so we were overcharged $9+ tax + auto gratuity. Ridiculous. That awful dish was lean cusine tv dinner quality was not even worth $10 let alone the scam price jump from $17 to $26. F*ING RIDICULOUS. A different person brought us our bill and we tried 2 or 3 times to have it fixed, however, they never fixed it. At this point we had been at the restaurant for THREE AND A HALF hours. We finally left without getting this price discrepancy fixed because we all needed to go. AWFUL FOOD, AWFUL EXPERIENCE. ONE OF THE WORST RESTAURANTS IN ST LOUIS. AVOID AT...

I’m going to start my EXPERIENCE off with the kicker: I HAVEN’T EVEN DINED HERE YET! 😤 So, on yesterday I created a birthday dinner reservation at this restaurant. Mind you, they charge $10/person for reservations. Therefore, I decided to call this morning just to verify because I have a large party! This entire incident occurred today between 11am and noon! An unprofessional African American girl answered the phone. I politely told her that I made a reservation online last night and I just wanted to confirm they saw it on their end. She responds, “yes we have the reservation!” I said, well don’t you need my name or phone number??? She says, yes what’s your number? I give her my number. After a short dramatic pause, she states, yes we have your reservation. Still not convinced that she properly confirmed, I asked, okay what day is the reservation for? She says, the 9th. I said, ma’am, I don’t have a reservation for the 9th! She proceeds to ask for my last name. I gave it to her. After another dramatic pause, she says, yes we got you down. Still not convinced, I asked, for what time? She says, just a second let me pull it back up!! JUST LYING! At this point I’m over it! So I ask if she can put me on the phone with a manager! This girl claims she’s a manager! I said, let me speak to someone else besides you because I want to file a complaint! I’m only calling to confirm a reservation and she was making it extremely difficult. She continues to claim that there is no one else in the entire restaurant I can speak to and started demanding me to call at 5:30! I said no, let me speak to someone NOW! Then she proceeds to hang up on me! Of course, I called back! I asked for her name, she wouldn’t give it to me and hung up AGAIN! So I call back! After 3 attempts of calling with no answer, I called again and a “crew member named Ashley” picks up the phone (after the so called manager said I couldn’t speak to anyone else). I asked Ashley if I can speak to a manager to file a complaint. Ashley claims that her “manager” went to the bathroom but she can write down my name and put it at the bar! I ended up just getting off the phone because at this point, I am furious and don’t even want to talk to anyone on that shift! I’m going to try to call back later this evening to give this place the benefit of the doubt and see if I can speak to a real professional! Tonight, we’ll see if I will dine with them for my bday or if I will be canceling my reservation and taking my PARTY OF 8 elsewhere! What I do know that if Prime 55 is smart, they will not allow this girl to answer their phones let alone speak to their guests period!!! People like her are legit downfalls to businesses! If I wasn’t so understanding in knowing that there is ALWAYS at least one bad apple in every bunch, I would’ve canceled without a second thought. But I will hopefully be speaking with someone different this evening and hopefully they will be offering some type of accommodation that will make me still want to patronize them! We’ll see and I will most certainly post...

I’ve given this establishment three tries over the course of two years, across its two locations and it has failed the mark each time. I really wanted to give it a fair chance, but now when people suggest it I will outright refuse.

The first time I tried prime 55 was at the height of reopening during the pandemic. Their Delmar location. The menu is very limited to start with. That’s fine. Less options make for a quick choice. The waitress failed to tell us what was and wasn’t available. I was unable to order My selection , and even my back up. Communication would’ve prevented the disappointment. Upon receiving my meal it just wasn’t up to par. Not terrible, but nothing spectacular.

Fast forward to the second time. The downtown location. Parking wasn’t really an issue because we had gone during the day during brunch/breakfast hours. It was 314 day and we were kept waiting in favor of other guests who were notable stl influencers. This rubbed me the wrong way because the place wasn’t even busy. Also wanting to add there was a DJ setting up, and the space isn’t really big enough for all of that. When I eventually ordered my food, it was missing a component that was specifically stated on the menu for that item. French toast and berries was totally missing the berries. I told the waitress about it, who denied that the item came with berries. I had to force her to bring out the menu to point how it came with berries. I was eventually brought out a side of blueberries not mixed berries. When the check comes. Not only am I given the wrong check. They failed to inform us about the mandatory fee for paying with a card. This is supposed to be listed somewhere, not stated when it’s time to pay. So weird. I also insisted on my check being reprinted, in which the waitress refused. My check had technically been paid by someone else in my party before we realized the mix up. They insisted that I pay for the check that was initially given to me. No. Not my mix up. I will gladly pay for what I received. This went on way too long and I had to get the manger involved who really wasn’t working with me either. But I stood my ground because I didn’t make any mistakes. This left a super bad taste in my mouth.

The third and last time I attended was again at the downtown location. I was with a friend during lunch and it wasn’t my choice. We walked in and it was pretty empty. There were some cameras and a couple of people in a booth. We were standing along with another duo waiting in front. The bartender literally just stood and stared at us. Didn’t say a word. If the place was closed for some media thing then that should’ve been stated, and announcement, signage, close the door or something. There was literally a line of us waiting for some sort of interaction and we’ll decided to leave.

I really wanted to like this place, but no. 3...