Walla Walla Steak Company — Restaurant in Walla Walla

My family and I attended for my birthday. We arrived and asked for a bourbon list. It was underwhelming at best. Common selections were absent and what was present was obscure and in some cases not bourbon at all, but bourbon "styled". The server knew nothing about the selections and had offered to bring someone else who was knowledgeable. Which itself was obviously fine. What wasn't was having to remind him and ask again when nobody showed up.

I ordered a porterhouse blue rare. It was said to be dry aged. It was also claimed to be prime grade. It was priced as if both of those claims were true. Neither of them were. It was also claimed to be grass fed. My first red flag was when I inquired about the length of age. Which they told me was 14 days. Not nearly long enough for a proper dry age. It's considered the bare minimum for a dry age in the best of circumstances. The second was the idea of prime grade grass fed. Since grass fed prime is very rare, and grass fed beef is rarely graded.

My table received their dishes separately. Something that is never done in fine dining. Tables should always receive their meals together except under the rarest of circumstances. When I received my steak it was medium rare (two temps beyond my order of blue rare). My father's was ordered medium rare and was received medium.

After sending my porterhouse back I was then presented with a T-bone (not a porterhouse) which was completely frozen. It was a translucent grey as if they had placed it on the charbroiler for just mere seconds.

I called the server over to tell him about this clear act of retaliation from the kitchen for having sent back my first steak. He claimed that they never serve previously frozen beef. To which I asked him to take the plate back and try to cut into it. He returned and admitted it was indeed still frozen then brought the FOH manager (unprovoked). Who again tried to claim they have no frozen beef. The server corrected him and told him he had seen for himself that it was frozen.

They did comp our meal. Which was nice. I'm still left disappointed regardless.

The service was not great in total. They forgot the bourbon and didn't know much about their steak products. They also served the table incorrectly. They did however handle a bad situation as well as can be expected in hindsight. They should never have been put in the situation to begin with though. They shouldn't be asked to lie about the quality of the beef and they should never be made to apologize for the unexcusable behavior of the kitchen staff.

As a former steakhouse owner and coming from two generations of cattlemen before me I admittedly have very high standards of steakhouses. As such I waited a while to write a review after my experience. I wanted to think about it and see if I still felt the same a bit later. Especially after they had comped the meal. I am still...

Good food, great drinks, terrible service. Visited on Memorial Day weekend, and fully expected the place to be busy, and it was. Arrived about 5 minutes early for our reservation and were seated promptly. Then we proceeded to wait...for everything...and in increasingly annoying durations. And during each wait, the server was nowhere to be seen -- not floating around the room taking care of other tables, but literally nowhere to be seen or flagged down. I had to go up to the bar to get a Coke for one of our party after waiting nearly 20 minutes for it to show up.

Worst of all was the wait for our food - from the time we ordered to the next contact from the server, it was nearly an hour. And that was only because we flagged her down to find out what was going on. 5 minutes later she shows up with bread, apologizing for the wait. 5 minutes after that, our food comes out. And two of the steaks were WAY overdone (we'd ordered medium rare and got something on the well side of medium well). Given that we didn't want to wait another hour for our food, and we were starving, we noted the problem to the waitress and dug in. Passable for a steak that was fully grey inside (to be fair, the other two dishes were fine, though one was a prime rib that I'd have just left if they screwed up).

Waitress appears again and lets us know that the manager has agreed to comp "our dessert" due to the overcooked steaks. Least they can do, right? We ordered three desserts for the four of us, and come time for the check, only one was comped -- two poorly done steaks, an hour wait for the food, and "our dessert" was a single comp. Ridiculous.

Finally, check comes and it has a 20% gratuity added. No issue with that, servers and kitchen staff deserve it. BUT, it was calculated on the pre-comp total and not the actual amount of the check. Granted, one dessert wasn't make-or-break, but I found it to be a little disingenuous to ask us to tip on a comped component of the meal.

The food that was properly cooked was pretty good, though perhaps not worth the premium being charged due to the absolutely abysmal service provided.

• UPDATE * : The GM contacted us this week to discuss our experience and has offered us a gift card to cover the cost of the two overcooked steaks and the poor service experience. Every place can have bad nights, we may see if the experience is better the next time we...

This restaurant was SUCH a disappointment. A group of 8 of us had a late night dinner reservation (9:15pm), as half of our party was arriving to town late in the evening. There was only our table, and two other tables still dining at the time, and due to our "high volume" the manager decided, (without telling us, until 45 minutes had passed and we had not received our drinks) that they were cutting off our entire table. For the record, one of our guests had too much wine that day, but was still respectful and not in any way belligerent. The rest of the party had only ordered one drink and one of us had no drinks whatsoever. There was no reason to cut off the entire table, even if they felt as though one person had too much to drink.

In addition to the complete lack of communication that there was by the server, when we asked to talk to the manager about the issue, they said that the manager had left and they weren't able to do anything. To add insult to injury, we then asked for sodas in lieu of our drinks, and they had the audacity to bring them to our table in children's sippy cups and said "that's just how we serve our soda here". I have never in my life been so disrespected in a restaurant. This is coming from someone who had worked in the restaurant industry for years.

Moreover, the automatic service charge at the end of the meal was the cherry on top of the absolute terrible experience. The check came with a typed sheet explaining their service charge policy that states:

"If there is any aspect of your experience that does not exceed expectations, we will make it right. Our management team welcomes the opportunity to discuss your concern."

This situation was handled in the complete opposite way that was referred to in their policy. The staff was dismissive and would not hear any of our concerns and there was no opportunity to discuss anything, whatsoever. When we finally were served our meals (with sippy cup soda, of course), it was an utter letdown. The lobster was completely overcooked and rubbery and my steak was average. Dare I say I've had better at Red lobster?

I would encourage anyone looking for a great place to eat in Walla Walla to look elsewhere and save themselves from a bad dining experience, like...