Lambert's of Taos — Restaurant in Taos

EXTREMELY DISAPPOINTED! Subpar dinner, unpleasant experience.

This restaurant came highly recommended. We were expecting it to be a highlight of our short getaway trip in Taos so we came ready to enjoy it!

We found it to be a mix of very bad with some good, all attached to a too bill and frustration.

DRINKS: We started with a signature Manhattan and a Margarita. They asked me if i wanted the classic Margarita, "sweet and sour". As i had the classic many times, in different cities/states, i said yes. Well, the drink was so extremely sour, as if the main ingredient was lime juice. Impossible to drink. I asked for some simple syrup, but they offered instead that i would upgrade for the Margarita with Grand Magnier added . I did and that was good, but I think anything offered on the menu should be enjoyable, or not offered at all, if not up to par.

As APPETIZERS we had: BEEF TARTAR - not bad. There are so many versions of this dish so we stay open minded when we order this dish. This beef tartar was not bad. The Aioli didn't have a taste of Dijon, and we could not trace any smoked olives - which was ok as we don't expect olives with this dish. We have never tartar not served with crostini or grilled slices of bread - a needed, perfect medium to carry the beef tartar. This one was accompanied by chips, which, while they were nice, crusty, light and not greasy, they really didn't work with the tartar, besides being extremely salty.

GRILLED OCTOPUS I LOVE grilled octopus! Grilled on the outside, tender meat inside . Well, this one was INEDIBLE! BURNT outside (see pics) - bitter and hard. I have never experienced it so, in the many places in US or other countries where i had it. The fact that, when i reported it inedible, showing the black, burnt pieces of meat, I was told that grilled octopus should be charred, took away any confidence i had in this establishment. I opted for another beef tartar as substution.

MAINS: FILLET MIGNON, served with potatoes, grilled asparagus and crispy leek

To my (pleasant) surprise, it was done to perfection. As we expected the whole meal to be. Medium-rare and tender, nice red wine reduction, asparagus tender, but with a bite to it.

PAPARDELLE BOLOGNESE: Flavorful dish, ample portion. The carrots in the sauce were undercooked, very al dente - which they should not be - but that didn't stop us from enjoying the dish.

DESSERT: We decided to share an APPLE PIE, served with HOMEMADE ICECREAM.

Terrible! First, being served with icecream, one would expect the pie to be hot, ar at least warm. This one was cold. The taste was not something resembling apple and the appearance and texture was so dence, more like a brownie. Very, very strange!

The ice cream was not soft and creamy, but (looking and tasting) more crumbly, with tiny crystals of ice.

This dish, as executed, should not be presented in any restaurant at all, more so in one considered upscale.

Overall, we were extremely disappointed. In the few days of a vacation, having a bad dinner, with a high cost, is not something that anybody would look to include in their experiences.

Making a stronger point on the unexpected, unacceptable quality of the dishes, and spoiling our evening even further, was not something we felt comfortable doing.

On top of it, we were presented with the moral conundrum of expressing our opinion on the meal through the tip, at the expense of the serving personnel, which would not have been fair either. So we chose not to shortcut the lady serving us, though her standing by the black-burnt octopus threw me off.

With tip, we spent close to $300 for an awful dinner and awful...

We had dinner at Lambert’s during a recent visit to Taos, NM. The restaurant is in an old house close to the plaza downtown. It’s a very upscale place! For the most part, dinner was decent, but there were misses, some huge! I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention upfront that David was our waiter… he did a great job. From walking us through the menu, to assisting with our perusal of the extensive wine list, he was awesome! Thanks David!

We started with a couple of cocktails, the El Damasco and a Nat’s Blue Cheese Martini… both were very good. With some apricot and cardamom, the El Damasco tasted a bit like Fall. And, how does one go wrong with blue cheese-stuffed olives in a Bombay martini?! The complimentary house bread and salted butter was a treat, however the butter was a bit too much on the salty side for our taste. We had the beef tartare appetizer, adorned with egg yolk and a Dijon sauce on the side. Very good. The dish came with homemade potato chips, which were very tasty, but again a bit heavy on the salt.

We selected the saffron seafood pappardelle and the bison strip loin as our entrees. Both dishes were good! The pasta was fresh-made in-house, and cooked to a perfect al dente. Again, the over-salted problem was there. (that’s been an observation in earlier reviews, obviously still an issue!). The strip loin was grilled perfect medium-rare, and was delicious. We enjoyed a bottle of Gruet Sauvage sparkling wine, one of our favorites from NM! David brought the bottle out early in an ice bucket, and but pour time it was the perfect temperature.

For dessert, we splurged and had the brownie sundae (vanilla ice cream, peanut mousse, salted caramel, chocolate), the pistachio-chocolate ice cream, and blackberry-pear sorbet. The sundae was great! The pistachio ice cream was a weird consistency, chewy and pasty, and lacked a specific flavor profile. Similarly, the sorbet was frozen, icy, and the flavors were lacking.

Towards the end of the meal, the hostess took over, cleared the table, poured the rest of the wine and asked if there was anything else… very odd to be rushing us out of there when there were empty tables in our dining area! IMHO, at that price point, diners should not be rushed to the door. We were there less than two hours, certainly well within any acceptable norm for fine dining!

So that’s the good, the bad and the ugly of our experience at Lambert’s. The restaurant is top-tier in Taos, but given the sub-par performance, there are plenty of other good places in the area. We don’t...

My family has been eating at Lambert's for 30 years; I can still remember a lobster Napoleon I had at the old location 25 years ago. You might think that the restaurant would be at least as innovative so many years later but you would be wrong. I really don't write reviews, preferring instead to speak directly to the establishment, but our in-person concerns were met with complete indifference. Three of the eight people in our party are in the food and wine business so we're not your average diners and we give a tremendous amount of leeway to restaurants, knowing how difficult running a restaurant is, particularly in the current environment.

This was my mother's 80th birthday dinner so definitely a special occasion. We started with the Aubry Champagne, intending to ramp up from there, but we were so put off by the inhospitable service that the table chose to only have a few glasses of wine after we finished the Champagne. My brother mentioned that he hadn't had lamb chops ($54) in a long time while our server was pouring the Champagne and I swear I'm not kidding when I say the server responded by saying "and you're not having them tonight either". This is when we learned that 2 of the 5 entrees they had on the menu were not available that evening. Not when we sat down, not when the server first approached our table nor the second time were we informed about the omissions on the menu. I should mention that the menu was a piece of paper so this easily could have been avoided if the restaurant had taken the time to reprint the menus. We asked if we could also order off the Treehouse menu from the upstairs bar menu (for my two young nieces) in light of the very few entrees available and our server didn't even respond to us, he just left the table. So weird.

We were then informed by the MOD that the kitchen would not allow us to order from the Treehouse menu even though technically our table was much closer to the kitchen than the upstairs bar. This is just arbitrary and stupid. At this point, we chose to limit our bill as this seemed like a money grab from a chef or kitchen being unaccommodating just for the sake of it.

The food was cooked adequately but very basic and unimaginative. We left a 20% tip, which for us is pretty paltry. A very unsatisfactory evening for such a...