Ponte Modern American — Restaurant in Tampa

After hearing many positive reviews as well as reading them online, I decided it was time to give this place a shot.

On first impression, the ambiance and decor is what you would expect it to be. Nice colors and contrast, comfortable seats, a nice open wine cellar, a view of the kitchen, and light music to fill in the background. The wine selection was relatively robust and very moderately priced. Service was on point, and we were greeted relatively quickly, with our waiter answering all questions we had with the detail you would expect from a restaurant that takes pride in their processes, ingredients and presentation.

To my dismay, the positivity quickly ended there. As with any new restaurant, I feel it’s only fair to order multiple items in each category, and so this night was no different. The night started off with 7 appetizers: East + West Coast Oysters, Crab + Rock Shrimp Cake, Salmon “Wagyu”, Triple Steak Tartare, Mushroom Soup, Foie Gras, and the Parker House Rolls. The highlight was the Mushroom Soup. Rich, flavorful, not too heavy. Pretty much what you’d look for in any soup, but this one was very well executed. The Foie Gras also had some good flavor, but this was only due to them adding a very sugary and crunchy waffle to pair. Unusual and unexpected, but needed. The Foie Gras was simply too charred, lacked proper temperature, and could have simply been much better. The Tartare, which presented with 3 different styles, was a bit dry, lacked complexity and flavor, and was overall a disappointment. The Oysters, Salmon and Crab/Shrimp cake were also just standard. Nothing to make you order them again, and certainly not worth returning for. The rolls were exactly as you’d expect them to be - it’s pretty hard to mess up bread.

For dinner, a few items were ordered as well. The Wagyu Selection, Salmon, Kansas City Bone-In, Mac & Cheese, Florida Corn, Exotic Mushrooms, Brussels and Shoestring Fries. The Wagyu selection was a selection of Strip Steak, not Filet. A complete missed opportunity. Not only this, but they were poor cuts and charred beyond belief, taking away from everything a Wagyu is supposed to be. I have a very similar sentiment regarding the Kansas City steak. The salmon was decent, certainly nothing to write home about, its base probably being the most enjoyable aspect. All of the sides were extremely basic and common in both flavor and uniqueness. They tasted as you’d expect from any steakhouse across the country, providing another missed opportunity for the kitchen.

For dessert, all 5 items were ordered, the final opportunity for a “wow” moment. This consisted of a Cheesecake with a sauce similar to Strawberry Purée, with what I believe was nitrogen cooled Strawberry Flakes on top, a Chocolate Tarte, a Carrot cake, the Yuzu Curd, and a small selection of finger pastries and deserts, including Macarons, two small tartes, and two small chocolates. The carrot cake was truly delicious, and would probably be my biggest recommendation on the entirety of the menu. It was savory, a perfect temperature, the base sauce was delicious, and was one of the better Carrot cakes I’ve had. Everything else was average or below. The Cheesecake had a close to sour finish, the Chocolate Tarte was about as basic as they come, the Yuzu Curd was so sweet you could only have a few bites at most, and the selection of finger pasties and deserts was underwhelming.

Overall, the experience was subpar. the presentation of every dish was fantastic, but certainly not worth the $1100+ cost. With new fine dining options popping up all over Tampa coupled with the solidified restaurants of Tampa putting out consistent dishes, I think money is better spent elsewhere. I may try this place again in a year or so to see how things have developed, but at this time, the restaurant does not live up to its hype. While a disappointment, I am optimistic that things may improve as time goes on. From my understanding, Chef Ponte is going for gold this year, but I respectfully think there is much improvement needed to even...

I will start by saying we are Foodie's and we were looking forward to celebrating our 44th Anniversary but disappointed in more ways than one. When making the reservation on Resy, we requested a special table for our Wednesday evening celebration. Resy did not have any means to upload a photo to coincide with the description we added for the table we desired. Ponte's website had contact info for assistance with an email where I sent photos with our reservation request made on Resy. Reservations were made and email was sent a month prior to our visit. Did not receive any acknowledgement from my email so sent a follow up asking for confirmation. This should have been a red flag to cancel after another no response but since we have always had requests on reservations honored, I thought this was just an oversight and was already taken care of internally. On arrival, we were kindly greeted with Happy Anniversary and escorted past the table requested to another table. There were two ladies seated at the table we desired, so nothing could be done about it at that point so we moved forward and on with dinner.

The other disappointment was most definitely the food, especially given the price. Please know we certainly don't mind a high price when justified. Our appetizers of the mushroom soup and lobster dumplings were very good, but although the bread tray was impressive looking, it fell flat in taste and freshness. We have also had much better Cesar salads. The Brussels side was very over salted that accompanied our meal. My husband has had many Beef Wellington dishes. The steak seemed even smaller than advertised and was poorly cooked. The presentation was unbalanced and minuscule as well. He did really give kudos to the accompanied sauce with it though. I got the aged Bone in Filet and it was very unevenly cooked and by itself had no seasoning flavor. It was not even near warm when it was served as the truffle butter did not even attempt to melt on top of it. The butter did at least help with added taste to some of the edible parts of the steak. The plate presentation of it was awful. Why even put an unappetizing tomato on the side? Chopping up fine parsley and sprinkling it around the plate would have at least helped in appearance. The bright sides of the experience was our server Joe and the ding room ambiance. Joe was very professional and attentive. We appreciated the Champagne Toast on arrival and the welcome card at the table. The complimentary desert chocolate and almond cookie was appreciated too.

We did get a follow up email the next day atter our dinner of what seemed standard to thank us for dining and hope to choose them for dining again in the future. I promptly responded to this email on Thursday with my info and forwarded my two previous emails. You would have thought that at a minimum this could have prompted some common courtesy to be given some kind of acknowledged response. Again, NO response to what is now a third email! IMHO, this is particularly shameful and arrogant of sorts since their website advertises a contact link for customer assistance. I made a point in the third follow up email I sent that generally being non responsive as our most significant issue here. Any humility on their part would have been better than nothing at all, which is where we are at several days later.

As mentioned, we have gladly warranted high priced meals in our past, but Ponte overall did not meet standards to justify this with our experience. Again, the significant issue that doesn't sit well and the MOST bothersome is the overt unprofessional business practice to have NO desire to reach out to a consumer after several correspondences. For that reason alone, we would never recommend or patronize...

Alright, first, the bad and the ugly. We arrived at 7 o'clock for our 6:30 reservation, yes we were late. The hostesses were kind enough to acknowledge and dramatically search for a table on their screen, while in a particular tone informed us we had to surrender our table at 8:15 because they had another reservation. This is where I politely disagreed and protested to their expectations to rush us through our dinner.

Now, some background to the situation. This was their Valentine's day event, for which I had made reservations a month in advance. And paid, not $100, not $200, but $400 already for the four course dinning experience. Mind you, the reservation did state we had a maximum of 2.5 hours, which is very reasonable. This would give us until 9:00 PM from the original time of our reservation. I made sure to point this out to them.

However, they pretended to hurry us up through this experience, 45 minutes early, and the reason was because we were late, which simply felt very disrespectful. Considering we called 45 minutes before our reservation to let them know we were running late (our babysitter was running late, therefore we had to delay). And then, when we were in route we called yet again to inform them we were on our way.

So, yes, I was quite annoyed with this check-in experience, for they to then tell me the best they could do was 8:45 but they'll do their best to accommodate us. I certainly did not feel like a valued customer, it felt like they were doing us a favor. Regardless, we went ahead and got seated, determined to enjoy our dinner and experience.

It did take 20 minutes before anyone came to our table and even offered water and if we wanted any drinks. But after the service got started it all went smoothly.

Now, to the good. Our server was delightful, she was kind and very amicable. We started with the canapes, that champagne pearl oyster was fantastic! We then went in for our appetizers, my wife had the salmon wagyu, very interesting, on top of crispy rice and a delicious uni aioli. I had the flight of tuna, and oh boy...what a surprise. The Otoro was like butter, delicate, and full of flavor. The portions were not small, so we did share and enjoyed our dishes.

For entrees we had the filet mignon and the Denver steak wagyu. My steak was perfect, I asked for rare and it was cooked beautifully, tender, and delicious. My wife's filet, even though we asked medium well, making sure we expressed we wanted pink, was brought to us well done. Such a disappointment for a nice cut of beef. Our server acknowledged this right away and they brought a perfect stake in just a few more minutes. Both steaks were delicious, and we definitely appreciated the quick correction.

For dessert, I can't even remember the names, but one was chocolate with vanilla ice cream, and a mascarpone dish with no strawberries topped with rose crumbles, it looked like a rose was dipped in nitrogen and then they crumbled it up at our table over the dish. That was a nice touch and end to our Valentine's day celebration.

Oh, and the wines, our server suggestions were fantastic! I started with a modern old fashioned, but the wines stole the show.

All in all, we kept on schedule and were out the door by 8:55 PM. With the initial reservation, drinks, and some additional service, our total came out to $545 everything included. We definitely enjoyed the dinner, the food was delicious and the portions were very generous. Unfortunately, due to our experience at check in I cannot give this...