Saltgrass Steak House — Restaurant in Tyler

Had a hankering for steak tonight, so I stopped at Saltgrass. It's a casual dining chain, but maybe a bit pricier than other restaurants operating in that zone. It's got kind of that "corporate marketing shabby decor" thing going on, where someone has studied and focus-grouped the perfect 'homey restaurant' look, down to the fake weathered paneling, and the carefully curated 'Texas decor' on the walls. But, you know, I don't really care about all that. The place was clean, looked decent enough, and ultimately, it's about the food and the service.

I had a 6oz sirloin, salad, fried mushrooms and a baked potato along with a "Ranch Water" (Topo Chico sparkling water, tequila and lime juice).

The Ranch Water wasn't crazy boozy, but it had a nice mild tequila and lime flavor floating underneath the sparkling water. It was nice and refreshing.

The steak was well seasoned and perfectly done--on one side. You can see from my pictures, the bottom half was much more on the rare side than medium rare. I don't absolutely require my steaks to be 100% perfect--I like a wide range of done-ness (so long as it's not way over done), so I didn't send it back, and it tasted just fine. But it's something to be aware of if you're a bit more finicky than I am.

The bread was warm, squishy soft and tasty. The potato--well, it was a potato. It wasn't shriveled from sitting all night in a warm drawer somewhere, which is my biggest complaint when I get baked potatoes from a restaurant. You know they're precooked, because nobody has time to sit for an hour for a potato to cook. But, at some point, the kitchen manager has to declare the potatoes a loss when they've sat there too long. This one was fine.

I especially liked the fried mushrooms. So often, they're soggy. These were crisp and tasty, with a good amount of flavoring in the coating.

The only thing that really kept this from being a great meal was the ambience. They had the music up way too loud. Like "sports bar" loud. Which means everyone around me had to raise their voices to have conversation. This made for a somewhat irritating and...

I am not the type to ever complain about my food or service. I also tip very well with normal service. We are not hard to deal with. Last night I took my wife on a date and when we arrived, they said it was a 30 to 45 minute wait. They took my phone number and we went to wait in the truck. We sat in the truck and at around 55 minutes we got a text that we were canceled. We went inside and they acted like they didn’t even know we were waiting , or who we were . I showed them the text messages from when we first got there, and when it said we were canceled almost an hour later. They said they don’t know why we even had to wait that long to begin with because they had plenty of seating. Which they did , because there was a lot of seating spaces empty. We sat down, ordered our drinks, and after we got them her attention went to the couple behind us as we were taking to her. The other couple sent both of their plates back because the orders were completely wrong. Our waitress just stopped talking to us and took off to them in the middle of us ordering…She came back 10 minutes later… We finally got to order. When they brought our food, my food was correct but my wife’s food was completely wrong. The waitress dropped off our food and just took off fast. We had no silverware. She didn’t ask if we wanted steak sauce , we had to wait on her to come back around to ask for silverware and steak sauce, and get my wife’s order fixed. She waited on her food for another 25 minutes. I ate mine cold. We never got a refill one time, she never asked us. I am not the type to throw a fit over food or anything like that. It was just horrible. I normally over tip. I still tipped 15% but I regret it. I regret it because our waitress wasn’t just super busy and would king a lot, she was hanging out at the front most of the time. It was a bummer, we missed our movie and had to cancel it...

Came for lunch on a Saturday, the restaurant was not very busy. We ordered drinks and food. The drinks took over 10 minutes for us to get. Our soup and salad was good, the steak was good but very fatty. The Mac and cheese was very dry and the sautéed onions and mushrooms we added to our steaks were the worst I’ve ever had. It was burnt and the seasonings were terrible. Our waitress only had the one table and she was impossible to find. We ordered a Bloody Mary and a very long black hair was in the drink. Our waitress went to the back and didn’t come back out for a full 20 minutes. After she finally came to check on us, we told her about the hair in the drink and she just took the drink away and did not offer any sort of an apology. She did get the manager involved to have the drink removed from our ticket. The receipt said the drink was removed due to “customer did not like drink”. We didn’t even drink any of the bloody Mary due to the long hair in it. The manager never came to our table and our waitress never apologized or acknowledged the long hair in the drink. This was a very disappointing experience. Our waitress was not attentive and the drinks took a ridiculously long time to get. We only ordered one mixed drink, a Bloody Mary, beer in a bottle and water. After the hair in the bloody Mary, we decided not to order anything else from the bar and requested water. I was very surprised by how long it took just to get water. We would be without a drink for over 10 minutes at a time. We will not be visiting this location again. Very disappointed in Staff and management. I attempted to provide feedback through the saltgrass website and the website doesn’t allow me to choose a location so I was unable to...