Union New American — Restaurant in Tampa

I've been an elite yelper for 5 years now and it's extremely rare I ever leave a bad review for an establishment but this one is a must. My friends and I came here for my birthday dinner. I wanted something modern and aesthetic and I've heard so many good things about union that I couldn't wait to try it. Looking at the menu, and seeing this wasn't no Outback or chilis, I expected top quality service. My fiancé made a reservation and we called multiple times and were told we would be sitting on the patio. I was super excited because I knew we'd have that beautiful aesthetic feel that I wanted. When we arrived, half of our party was already seated upstairs with their drinks enjoying the night for 30 minutes. I wasn't even seated 5 minutes when the manager Sean came over and regret to inform us that we were seated at the wrong table and that someone else already reserved that specific table. We went back and forth and we decided it wasn't a hill we were dying on so we got up and went to the downstairs patio table. There were 8 of us sitting at a tight circle table. Sean knew we were all pissed and said that he would buy us all a round of drinks AS A START. Sean was very attentive after the whole table incident so emotions were dying down and we were all starting to enjoy the night. The waiter we had, who was great, god bless his soul for working under this sad excuse of management, ASKED half the table if they wanted a sushi platter to which they said yes. When I went to go order appetizers, he said he was going to bring the table a sushi platter (which wasn't on the menu so one would only assume it was to make up for their mistake) and asked if there was one other appetizer I would like to add so I added the bread as I didn't want to take advantage and order something super expensive as I thought they were doing us a favor. WELL WRONG. We all order steaks for dinner, food was fantastic I'll give them that! I ordered the filet but they brought me out a ribeye and when I was honest that it wasn't what I ordered they literally took it away and brought me the filet. I mean it was my birthday, just leave the steak after completely messing up. My other friend got the filet and hers came out completely over cooked . We waited TWENTY minutes to get our corrected steaks and by that time, everyone was done eating. We order a few desserts, thinking at least the birthday dessert would be covered. THEN the bill came. The sushi platter was split between all 4 couples, the birthday dessert was on the bill, only one round of drinks was picked up, the bread was on our bill. All things we were ASKED if we wanted. Well, Sean the manager left for the night so we had to deal with the other manager that was there, Joe. He was completely and utterly rude. He had the audacity to speak down to us. When you're paying 70+ dollars for a steak, you better believe the customer is always right. I'm not this entitled little yelper, but the way we were treated here last night was so distasteful and I honestly would never go back or even recommend going there to anyone who asks. We eventually had things taken off the bill, which was appreciated but honestly, after going through the chaos that happened, it honestly doesn't make up for anything. I'm just so curious what made the other party so special that we had to get up from our original table to accommodate them. When you reserve a table, you reserve it. It's not paid for. So they should have sat them somewhere else.

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Terrible Experience! My daughter wanted to have her 16th birthday dinner and I reserved a table for 16 in July. I was told it was a $1000 request that went towards the bill. Sure ok. We get there exactly at the time and my table wasn’t ready so my party of 16 had to wait by the door (which was a very small area and we were constantly in everyone’s way) we waited 40 minutes for our “table”, finally we got sat and our table consisted of 2 corner booths and a regular table added on, so the added on table was blocked off from the rest of the group because of the corners from the booth. Plainly put, they charged me $1000 and created some makeshift tables to fit as if it was last minute and they weren’t expecting us -.- But I watched another party of 10 walk right in and be seated while we waited, I’m sure it had nothing to do with my skin tone though. Once seated, we waited 30 minutes for glasses of water and our drink orders. We ordered another round of drinks from the bar, waited an hour for those drinks and when I asked the waiter he said “oh I forgot” and he went to put them in. He also did not remove our plates or empty cups from the table as they were finished. We put our food order in at about 7:45 and got our food at 9:20. I ordered the filet (which I have been ordering at establishments for 20 years) and I ordered it ‘rare’ Pittsburg style. It came out so burnt and overcooked on the top that all I could taste was char. The waiter sends it back and says his “executive chef” would remake it. Ok sure, I wait another 20minutes while everyone at the table finished their meals. The chef brings out my food and says “We remade it for you, but instead of Pittsburgh we just cooked it a little in the top and made it medium rare” and asked me to check the temp. I disregarded the condescension and cut into the steak, it looked ok enough to eat. So I gave him the thumbs up. I begin eating it, after about 2 bites, I notice the center is ice cold, not room temp or slightly cold, ICE COLD middle. I sent it back and asked for the bill so we can leave. The manager comes over to placate and asks me what happened, so I explained, to which he proceeds to patronize me by saying “you ordered medium rare, it’s supposed to be cold” but that’s when I had to correct him, because this isn’t my first time ordering a $60 filet and I didn’t appreciate him trying to educate me on temperatures of meat like I’m some backwoods country person that’s never been to a nice restaurant. When I checked my account this morning, I saw they overcharged me more than what I was billed for. My entire party spent a little over $800 for crappy service and mediocre food. I will NEVER return and I’ll make sure my employers are aware of this so we never make the mistake of...

Came here on a weekday night and had a reservation which was easy to get comparatively to other Tampa restaurants.

Overall ambiance was nice and modern/contemporary. It had music playing in the background and because it was one large room with bar and dining area, it was quite loud with the crowd and music. Overall would’ve preferred the music volume to be turned down a little.

Started with a Lychee Lover cocktail. It was very tasty and elegantly presented.

For appetizers, we had the east coast oysters, milk bread, and yellowfin tuna tartare. The oysters and jalapeño-apple mignonette was very tasty. The milk bread was also good and very fluffy. And lastly the yellowfin tuna tartare although tasty, had a very small portion of the tartare relative to the amount of chips and sauce on the plate leaving us a little disappointed in portion size.

For entree, I had the filet with shrimp topping. Originally when brought out, the server told me the wrong steak temperature (I had ordered medium and he had said “‘medium rare”). I told him is he sure it’s not medium because I had ordered medium, he said it’s definitely not medium and offered to take it back without having me cut it to see if I was ok with the temperature. When it did come back, I noticed it was very smoky smelling compared to when it originally came out. The temperature was a medium but the intense smoke smell was off-putting. The shrimp topping was cooked well although would’ve preferred the shrimp in a scampi sauce or some some sort of liquid.. the steak and the shrimp topping were very dry… maybe a simple brush of garlic better would’ve alleviated this. The potato was ok.. not very seasoned.. but nice texture of crispy and soft.

For dessert, we got the cookies and vanilla milk. We didn’t really taste any vanilla flavor to the milk… tasted very much like normal milk not sweetened or flavored at all. The cookie was warm and nice although not the best warm cookie I’ve ever had.

Overall I’d go back again for sure… they were very interested in receiving feedback to improve which I found comforting. The pace of dishes coming to our table was a little rushed (understandably we had ordered a lot and many dishes came out quickly without giving enough time to enjoy the prior dish).

To summarize, a new and very nice modern American restaurant to add to Tampa’s growing restaurant scene. Good drinks and food and location near Westshore and the airport will be good for business travelers and...