Sullivan's Steakhouse — Restaurant in Upper Merion Township

A friend and I entered Sullivans around 5 pm on Saturday looking to get a quick bite to eat after a class we had just taken. We moved our way over to the bar area where a couple was getting ready to leave. After the couple left we stood by their seats waiting for the bar to be cleared of their dishes . As we were waiting we noticed that the bar tender behind the bar was noticeably avoiding eye contact with us. We thought it was weird but brushed it off. We waited standing next to the bar for over 10 minutes. There were two bar tenders whom both saw us waiting patiently but never cleared the dishes for us to sit down. Their names were Marilyn and Kim. It wasn’t until my friend asked another waiter who was not stationed at the bar “ do we have to sit down for the dishes to be cleared”. He said he would get someone to take care of it. After 3 mins a man came and cleared the dishes and said he was sorry for the wait. After sitting down the bar tender marylin then said to both my friend and I “ ladies I’m going to need to see your ids”. As a waiter you are trained to greet within 2 mins of a customer sitting. The first thing this woman said to us was about our ids. Nothing about sorry for your wait, my name is…, what brings you in today. Nothing along those lines. It is extremely disheartening that we were not only ignored but also treated with little respect. It was so disrespectful that we up and left to get a manager after that negative encounter with marylin. We didn’t even know her name until we spoke to the manager. Whom was not much of a help. We explained to Mike the story and he began his reply with “we’ve been having many issues lately about about “ and we thought he was talking about customer service with marylin. But then he proceeded to speak about fake IDS. We were a little shocked about his response. We thought we would receive an apology but instead was offered an excuse for the unacceptable behavior that we experienced at what we thought was a nice establishment. At that point we did not feel comfortable enough to spend our money in such a place. I walked in Sullivans excited to have a cocktail great food and amazing customer service. I walked out feeling confused, perturbed, and as if I did something wrong. Not to mention starving. I wanted to write to you all so that you know what has taken place and what was done in response to that. As a woman of color I did not appreciate how I felt after coming...

Definitely now the minor league Steak House in KOP. This was the last steakhouse in this area that we hadn't been to. So we wanted to complete the circle. We really thought it was going to be a special night for us as a couple after waiting all these years. The hype that we've heard for many years truly did not live up. Perhaps, they can get a post Covid pass, but it became clear that there's several improvements needed with the staff. There seems to be a more experienced staff members surrounded by much less experienced staff members. For the price you're paying there are many little things wrong right now. The restaurant was barely crowded and there were at least six different parties in the waiting area with the same reservation time slot and because of that, the host had to make all of us wait even longer to be seated. I expected to see a much more crowded restaurant because of this but when we entered the dining room, that wasn't the case at all. The oysters on the half shell were merely opened but not shocked completely so we had to dig them out of the shells ourselves. Again, at a high end restaurant and even middle tier restaurants oysters are supposed to be fully shucked and removed from the shells and then just float inside the shell and that couple together with the fact that we weren't even given a fork to retrieve the oysters from the shell at first was a rookie move that you would expect someone with experience would catch. When the steaks were ready, the runner didn't know what table to deliver them to So we watched for about 5 minutes as our freshly finished steaks walked around the dining room only to return back to the kitchen so they could continue to cool off and then eventually make it to the table after 5 minutes of walking around the dining room. The wine was completely flat and tasted as if it was sitting in the bottom of an open bottle for quite some time. The three pieces of asparagus was laughable as a side dish and it was also completely overdone. After a less than pleasing experience, we decided to take our dessert to go and we got home We also saw that the one part of the key lime pie which we were most hoping for, the raspberry, was missing. Again. For what you're paying and what you expect at this type of restaurant, this was definitely a disappointing date night for the two of us. We can only hope it will improve as the weeks and months post pandemic continue to help places...

To begin with I give this place zero stars. On 9/28 at approximately 6:50pm my boyfriend and I arrived at Sullivans to enjoy dinner and drinks at the bar. What I thought would be an uneventful evening ended in us getting racially profiled first by the hostess and then by the manager. We casually sat at the bar then a female hostess walked over to us and requested that we leave the restaurant. She explained my pants were not a part of the Sullivans dress code policy. I immediately thought in comparison to all staff managing this establishment, I was clean and well-dressed, and wearing black comfortable pants. The hostess on the other hand was sloppily dressed wearing caked up makeup and a tight uncomfortable uniform. I looked around at other people dining and realized the majority of all “Caucasian diners” were wearing similar clothing to myself. This disrespectful encounter felt humiliating since it was my first time dining here, and my boyfriend patronized this establishment for many years and never encountered such a thing. After speaking with the site manager, I concluded that the obvious issue here is that the dress code is SELECTIVELY ENFORCED against a certain subset of people. So clearly it is being used as a pretext to alienate and preclude a particular type of customer from patronizing this establishment. Going forward I want Sullivans to keep in mind the following:

-Don’t draw the conclusion that black people in these communities can’t afford to go to high-end dining spots. This lacks nuance and is flat-out racist. -Major pricy upscale steakhouses I have been to have a set of standards for staff decorum. My point is that if the restaurant has a dress code for customers, I expect the same rules to apply in house with employees. Also let these same rules apply to all diners including children and white folks. Also, it doesn’t make business sense to set up barriers for customers at a time when your restaurant is hanging on by a thread financially. Minorities are keeping your doors open. -Lastly, these types of dress codes come with an air of plausible deniability, and the excuse that if a white person were to dress the same way, they too would be denied entry. But most of the time, non-Black people wind up slipping by the code.

Sullivan’s it’s 2024 and you need...