Redhawk Gastropub — Restaurant in Twin Falls

Beautiful building and location, pleasant staff, however, sad execution of poor quality food.

Visited Friday 7:30 with an online reservation. Totally packed parking lot, yet strangely quiet and almost empty restaurant. We asked the hostess and were told they have a large banquet hall attached and there was an event.

We were taking a friend out for dinner who moved to Twin Falls recently for work. All of our party are from the east coast, and are first time visitors to this beautiful state.

Lovely interior, spacious with a lofty beamed ceiling, glass walls overlooking the spectacular canyon. Friendly, pleasant staff.

The menu was varied and interesting, and we each found many dishes tempting. We started with drinks, a cocktail and 2 different beers. One beer was presented in the bottle, we had to ask for a glass.

For an appetizer, we ordered the:

“CRISPY BRUSSEL SPROUTS   $14 Flash-fried brussel sprouts and bacon bits, tossed in a maple bacon vinaigrette and topped with shaved Romano cheese.”

They were almost inedible. So greasy, drowning in grease and vinaigrette and almost cold. The bacon was too salty, too smokey and overpowering, not a good choice. Our guest had never eaten Brussel sprouts before, so we told him to give them another try elsewhere, not to judge them all by this terrible concoction.

For entrees, our guest chose:

AHI TUNA   $28 Eight-ounce Ahi Tuna, rolled in a savory sesame seed crust, pan-seared to rare, and laid over a bed of white rice. Served with wasabi, ginger soy, and pickled sushi ginger.

He didn’t say much about his meal, but he liked it ok. He gave us each a slice of ahi, and we both agree that it tasted bad. Not fresh, and seasoned strangely.

My spouse had a ribeye:

RIBEYE STEAK   $38 Grilled 14oz Prime Ribeye steak topped with beef demi-glace sauce.

since the prime-rib had sold out. It was not hot and not very tasty or tender, even though it wad ordered medium rare. I ordered the kale salad, but swapped out the kale for arugula.

*CRUNCHY KALE SALAD A vibrant mix of fresh kale, sweet-tart pickled cranberries, Granny Smith apples, roasted pistachios, and crunchy toasted quinoa. All hand-tossed in a Citrus Honey Sage vinaigrette and topped with shaved Parmesan cheese.

The arugula was fresh, but the rest was unpleasant. Sour dressing and pickled cranberries are not s good idea. The pistachios were small and whole and stayed on the bottom. Difficult to eat with the other ingredients. Overall, sour cranberries, sour dressing, and sour apples - just why?

I had the poke bowl.

AHI POKÉ BOWL   $18 Four-ounce Ahi Tuna cubed, marinated in a gluten-free soy-sesame sauce, and laid over a bed of seaweed salad. Topped with fresh green onions and spicy mayo.

It’s tough to make a bad poke bowl, but Redhawk succeeded. Similar to the Brussel sprouts, the chef struck again with the swimming in sauces treatment. The tuna MAY have been okay, but the soy sauce tasted bad, so I couldn’t tell. To make it even worse, they squirt-slathered so much mayonnaise ALL over it, I could not eat it. Even the spicy mayo tasted bad. I had my others taste my food, and everyone agreed it was bad.

Luckily, I had ordered a baked potato with butter only, which was superb. It was my first Idaho spud and it was tender and creamy inside. I took the butter off of it, ax there was way too much. It was unsalted butter, btw - an odd choice, too. I wanted to taste the potato as I had been looking forward to trying the famous item. It was the first and only thing at Redhawk that did not disappoint me!

Maybe the kitchen was slammed due to the large event? That shouldn’t be the customer’s problem.

To summarize, nice looking place, okay atmosphere, pleasant staff, but crummy food. And let’s face it, that...

Mother's Day Brunch May 2023. We drove in from Boise for the single worst dining experience of our entire lives. We were there a few minutes before the doors were unlocked and so we were the first people sat. It started upon entering the restaurant with breathtaking panoramic views of the canyon with the morning light reflecting from burnished wood surfaces, when the server led us though a door in the back of the restaurant into a dank, disused service hallway and into a connecting event hall with disgustingly dirty carpet, haphazardly placed tables with old used-to-be-white tablecloths thrown on top, a couple menu cards, and zero ambiance whatsoever. One of the chairs had a booger crusted on it if that counts as ambiance. We ordered drinks shortly after being seated – I say ‘ordered’ and not ‘enjoyed’ because we never received them after 30 minutes (remember, we were the first people sat so presumably there wasn’t a rush prior to our order). A good third of the pile of plates at the front of the buffet station were dirty (bits of dishwasher-dried-on food stuck to them), so after finding an acceptably clean one I wandered through a lackluster potluck of side dishes comprised mostly of mac/cheese and potato dishes that looked like they’d been shipped directly in from the hospital cafeteria leftovers. I settled on cold smashed potatoes, even colder stuffing, some mac/cheese bits (the only good part of the entire morning) and headed over to get some prime rib (the ham looked like they found it on the ‘last chance’ rack at a roadside butcher – no thank you!), and WOW was I about to be disappointed. After digging through the bundles of red napkins wrapped around dirty silverware to find something passably clean, I was trying to use my butter knife since they didn’t have anything else to saw through this RAW (not medium rare and certainly not up to 120 degrees) chunk of gristly…well I guess it could be technically called prime rib, but it was mostly silver skin and uncooked fat; it could seriously have used the au jus that wasn’t present to give the otherwise bland, undercooked, overly-fatty lump of beef some flavor. Truly, at this point it was just disrespectful to the cow. My wife decided on the breakfast side of the buffet and her experience was not any better. We’re talking previously frozen breakfast foods: luke-warm weirdly colored ‘sausage’, greasy limp bacon, cold french toast and pancakes, and boxed muffins/desserts. After a half hour waiting for our drinks in our dreary converted mess hall I journeyed back through the weird hallway into the actual restaurant (which again, is breathtakingly pretty) where I tried to flag down a server. I asked about being seated in the actual restaurant (which is where I was led to believe my reservation was originally) and I was very rudely told that it was not possible. I asked to speak to a manager to check on the status of my drinks (remember them?!) and I was told there was not a manager on staff at that time and I was welcome to wait at my table in the dungeon for our drinks. This was nowhere close to what was represented on the website. If I would have known I was driving 2 hours each way to sit in a musty, dirty-carpeted room at a table with no décor and booger-crusted chairs only to be exposed to either helpless or rude staff to try to choke down disgustingly underprepared food off of dirty dishes with nothing to wash it all down, I would have laughed! And to sell this experience for Mother’s day of all days? That’s just straight up mean. I cannot fathom what the general population of mothers has done to make this restaurant hate them so very, very much, but rest assured, the message was received...

To start this off I would like to say I love the idea of this place, having different atmospheres under the same roof, all with views of the canyon is such a great idea. We were excited to try it out and the atmosphere was great, (I do wish the website would be clear about what atmosphere you are getting in the different areas so you can book accordingly) the live band was in the main dining area and I would've thought the band would be in the bar / fireside room. However like I said the atmosphere was great and now we know where to sit depending on what atmosphere we are looking for. The food was not great, my brother ordered prime rib medium rare and ended up with an end cap obviously well done... ( we were ordering at 6pm) and no they weren't out or low on prime rib. The top crust of the steak was so salty you couldn't eat it. We also ordered Lobster tails, 1 of the three was OK, the other two were very overcooked and rubbery. The asperges was cooked well and had great flavor, however the mushrooms for my steak looked old and dry. My wife's filet was hard on top like it was sitting under a heat light. Our server was great! Even though she was extremely busy she never let a drink glass go empty and was attentive to our needs. The service however was disappointing. When our server asked us how our meal was and we answered honestly with OK, she was immediately trying to fix it. Unfortunately it was the wrong approach by the manager that gets the disappointing review. We had told our server what the issues were and that we didn't want anything. The manager told her to offer free dessert, (like offering someone thats not happy with your food, more of your food will make it better...) we declined and again told our server we didn't want of need anything. The only reason we said anything at all was because we were asked. When our server brought the check the manager had taken 25% off the bill, (not what we were looking for so we left that along with the normal tip for our server) what bothered me about the 25% off was we were never asked by the manager what was wrong or what they could do to fix it. So giving us 25% off did nothing to fix the issue. I don't claim to know the issue other than to say it's in the kitchen. The atmosphere was great, our server was great, the food was OK at best. Not a place I'm likely going back to, and...