Humbert House — Restaurant in Town of Clarence

So many emotions and thoughts take over my mind as I reflect on my dining experience at Humbert House. My wife and I were trying to think of a place to go to for Valentine’s Day weekend and saw all these wonderful positive reviews for the restaurant and figured this was the place to go. Boy did that back-fire. Let’s see, we got a really cozy comfy seating right next to/in front of the kitchen doors. Every time they opened the door (obviously a lot) it was like the gates of heaven opening up with blinding white lights. Really set the mood. I didn’t see a speaker on top of us but, the music was so loud our server was like “can you even hear me?”. No, no we could not hear her. Kindly enough she asked for the music to be turned down which lasted for about 20 minutes and we were back to raving (not really though, terrible taste in music). Now on to food and drink. Our cocktail was very tasty same with the glass of house Cab. With the prices they were charging for food I was actually really shocked to see that the alcohol was reasonably priced (not known till we got the bill of course). For V-Day it was a set menu, three courses (app, main dish, dessert) for various prices ($100 - $70) depending on your main dish. There was surprisingly only a $5 difference between Chicken Milanese and a 9oz Filet Mignon and somehow if you choose Stuffed Pepper Raviolis as your main dish, you were going to pay $70. Let’s just think about that for a second. As a reasonable estimate let’s say the app and dessert are each $15ish, that means you are paying roughly $40ish for Stuffed Pepper Raviolis. Shocking no?! Every dish was extremely underwhelming visually. The Korean Fried Chicken app was just pieces of chicken thrown in a tiny bowl no effort in plating what so ever. The Kale Caesar was just Kale with anchovy dressing. There wasn’t much Ceasar happening there. The Filet (which was $90) only came with two roasted carrots, maybe like 4 halved semi cooked brussels sprouts, one fingerling potato and a splash of some questionable white sauce. Lastly dessert. The quantity per type of dessert significantly varied. You could have gotten a huge slice of red velvet cake, three giant churros or a tiny piece of cheesecake that was plated to look like an abstract piece of art (the only thing they actually put effort into). The cheesecake visually looked appealing but, that was about it. There was no flavor to it. Two out of the three churros were raw in the center not to mention by the time it got to us the ice cream was just a pool of liquid. Would you really want to present that to your customer who knowingly is spending per person a minimum of $90? It’s not like the ice cream was questionably melted; it was liquid cream on the plate. We were just so confused that they appear to be advertising and based on prices want to be this upper scale dining experience and yet your servers are wearing jeans (some ripped) and t-shirts. The entire place just doesn’t make any sense. Overall, I feel like I got robbed by the price which did not remotely match up to the quality of food or the attention to service/presentation. I was prepared to spend what I did but, feel like I left empty handed. I seriously doubt we will be returning… unless someone else is paying. I think they have a long way to go to get to where in their minds...

A more fitting name for this restaurant is “The Ho-Hum House” because that is exactly what the food is there. This was my first time at this establishment and I would not return unless someone else was paying.

Our waiter was very nice, but incredibly inexperienced and lacked basic knowledge about the menu and bar. Nothing here was the waiter’s fault, and we advised him of such.

As someone else mentioned, the food and drinks price-wise are on par with NYC or Toronto, but are nowhere near the level of taste or quality. We got there on time for our 6:30 reservation, and finished at 8:30. It was not crowded.

I ordered the BLT salad to start, which was fine, but had more green olives (which are not mentioned on the menu) on it than bacon. For $17, you could get better value at Wendy’s. My friend did not get a starter, and we then waited over an hour after my salad for the entrees. There is no bread service.

After reading the reviews for this restaurant after our experience, we discovered that this is a Salvatore’s owned place, which makes the experience all the more surprising. A true Italian should know that you never leave whole cloves of garlic in your sauce. The bolognese was inedibly sweet, with at least 4 whole cloves of garlic in my dish alone. Dumping an entire cup of crushed red pepper on it only just made it tolerable. I rarely leave leftovers at a restaurant, but the sauce was just simply terrible. It was almost like the sauce was made with pure tomato paste, sugar and water. Well, and those garlic cloves. After our experience, I went back online and looked at the menu, and wondered if that bolognese was actually the week’s prior sausage arrabbiata dish but just with crumbled up sausage and put in the sauce. My friend likened the taste to Spaghetti-Os.

I appreciate that Italians will always think their own sauce is better than someone else’s so it can be subjective, but what my friend received was inexcusable.

Firstly, she ordered the twin filet and asked to sub the mushroom vegetable for another vegetable, which the waiter had to ask what vegetables they had. When he returned, he indicated that they could sub the mushrooms for broccoli in a cheese sauce. When her dinner arrived, not only were the two filets well done instead of medium well and completely burned on the outside, but the broccoli was not in a cheese sauce. It had simply been sprinkled with congealed shredded cheddar that looked like cheese whiz that had been put under a broiler. It tasted about as good as the above description. My friend did advise the waiter and her meal was taken off the bill, but most of the post-experience reviews seem to commiserate similarly with the steak dishes there.

They did offer a free dessert. The flourless chocolate cake was fine, but would not be worth the $15-17 I believe it was listed as. We ended up going somewhere else so my friend could eat something.

I think there is some promise here, but there are certainly many other restaurants in the area charging the same, or less, that are eons better. I recognize every restaurant has a bad night, but to stay relevant and on the radar, the quality here needs to improve or, at the very least,...

The evening started with it taking over 35 minutes to get 2 drinks. The excuse was there was a bartender in training. There were only 2 people at the bar so no excuse. Our order was never taken until we were sitting for over for 35 minutes. Still no drinks at this point. I ordered the Barata salad with tomatoes and basil only 15 minutes later to be told they were out of barata and I had to chose something else. Drinks came. 1 of 2 taken off the tab stating that was the best they could do My friend ordered the steak sandwich on brioche roll. It came with mayo on a sub roll. When we complained finally we were told the manager said she can give 2 deserts but that’s it. Our waiter was so sweet and apologizing profusely. I then asked that he send the manager over. We proceeded to explain what transpired to her. We were not looking for a free meal by any means. A drink is $18. If we wanted that we would have ordered from a Local pizzeria bc that what the steak sandwich was the equivalent of. I wanted to speak with her so she could take responsibility instead of sending the poor waiter to do her dirty work. She’s in charge. It was up to her to come over and try to right the wrong. She came over. Smug. Apologized and thanked us for letting her know our concerns even though she already knew stating the owner was coming in and she’d let him know. Ok. Sounds great. She never offered any compensation or any way to get us to give it a second chance. Their social media presence is what made me want to try it to begin with but never again. There are plenty of other restaurants in WNY that are curious with...