Rose's Luxury — Restaurant in Washington

This was our second visit to Rose's Luxury, and I have to admit that we were terribly disappointed. Our first visit was in 2019 to celebrate a birthday with a large group. The service was great. The food was great. Drawing from that memory, we were excited to return. We intentionally chose a summer month in hopes the menu would be a bit different than when we came in the late fall previously. During our 2019 visit, we had a true tasting menu experience. Our server asked about dietary restrictions/preferences and proceeded to bring out an array of dishes over the course of our meal. However, as of 2023, Rose's has moved to a "choose your own adventure" style of menu with notably fewer courses. You start off with bread service that comes with a side of fried chicken butter. In theory, this all sounds interesting, but when you actually try it on the biscuit itself, it's hard to distinguish any particular flavor. The biscuit + butter combo just tastes like butter. For our first course, we went with the ice cream and lychee salad. Rose's seems overly focused on the presentation of the ice cream + caviar than the practicality of eating it. The little metallic shell the caviar arrives in constantly wobbles as you desperately try to scoop out a bit of caviar. The lychee salad was probably the best dish we had all night. Around this time, you then receive a "gift" from your server. For everyone around us at the chef's counter, that was the caramelized cauliflower. The trick of making it appear to be a "gift" failed miserably as we heard the same claim made multiple times to our left and right. It definitely came off as a mental trick to try to get you to tip more at the end of the meal. We then moved into the pasta course. The Mentaiko Spaghetti was our preferred dish during this course, with a sauce that was crafted with a lot of butter and some different elements to give it an oceanic taste. On to the main course - we ordered the short rib because we did not want to eat fried fish for dinner. When our short rib was delivered, we couldn't help but laugh. For the two of us, we received 5 small pieces of short rib that were about 1.5 inches x 3 inches. This isn't wagyu. This is just an incredibly small portion of poorly cooked short rib (it was still tough), sitting in a lake of dairy-filled potatoes. And finally - dessert. The largest course we received (no exaggeration). This massive dessert bowl came with three large scoops of ice cream, flanked by two flaky pieces of pastry dough. I ended up finishing all of this because I was still hungry. Meanwhile, my partner left with a stomachache from the massive amounts of dairy used throughout the meal. The meal was disappointing, and the service wasn't much better. We arrived during the middle of an absolute downpour, soaked from head to toe from the rain. There was a basket of towels on the host stand, but they were not even offered to us, despite being offered to customers ahead of us. We sat at the chef's counter but had virtually no interaction with the kitchen staff. Instead, we just watched as people tried to squeeze by each other in the tight space. Toward the end of the meal (after asking), we learned that there are multiple "off-menu" items that are available to be ordered instead of what's on the menu. None of these were ever mentioned to us, making ordering very much an "if you know, you know" situation. Lastly, Rose's restaurant group has introduced a "3.5% I-82 Fee" to all checks that serves as a nice surprise extra 3.5% cost to your meal. The group blames voters for choosing for restaurants to pay staff a livable wage. They are avoiding increasing their menu prices to account for the increased cost, opting to charge a 3.5% that you'll only actually see when you receive your bill. This is because they rely on deception to trick consumers to think their prices are cheaper than they actually are - "as menu prices cross certain thresholds, guest buying behavior is affected, meaning that we ultimately have less guests join us each night." Straight from...

Came to Rose's luxury on Valentine's Day after making reservations 2-3 weeks in advance through Resy. Was my second time coming in over 6 years. I may have done a take out in between. They change their menu quite often and it's no surprise that they are a Michelin star restaurant with their excellent service and carefully prepared food. There are many staff both in the kitchen and in the front of house. However, a few things caught my attention this time around. First thing was that cleanliness was lacking. I noticed crumbs on my chair prior to sitting down when I was seated right at open. The linen napkin smelled like an old rag, stale oil, washed with only water and left to air dry in a pile. I didn't even bother asking for another linen because my partner's linen also smelled terrible. I just used it to wipe the seat before I sat down. Went to the bathroom to wash my hands before and after. Since it was Valentine's Day, they had a prix fixe menu in which everything was chosen besides the entree and dessert. My partner and I started with the Rum Slushie. It was served in a reusable red cup with a paper straw and a little umbrella decoration. The drink was pretty good and had a good balance of pineapple, coconut, lime and rum. The starter was the Lychee salad which never leaves the menu as I was told. It was refreshing and had a nice spicy kick to it. However, the pork sausage inside was very salty. In fact everything served in this meal was overly seasoned with salt. It took away from enjoying the ingredients. The seafood tower had mussels, kusshi oysters and prawn. The mussels and oysters had a pretty fishy taste. Probably not in the freshest state since it was prepped beforehand. I saw a whole row of these seafood towers while I walked past the kitchen when I got to the restaurant 30 minutes before I even got this served. The prawns were delicious and went well with the sauce. The Italian style beef sauce mafaldine pasta was probably my least favorite dish. Maybe it is a fresh pasta thing. The pasta felt overdone, it was doughy and mushy. The sauce was also heavily seasoned with salt. I kept chugging water during this meal that my cup got refilled every time there was a new dish. I normally do not drink much water during a meal. My favorite part of the experience this evening was the beef tenderloin. It was cooked perfectly. The meat was extremely tender and it was not seasoned too heavily so it really made the meat shine. The hash brown block was nothing too special besides being fried in duck fat which gave it a crispy texture. For dessert we chose their cream puff. It had hints of pistachio, white chocolate, cheese, yuzu and the puff itself had a nice texture. Overall, the dessert was a nice little sweet treat, but I wondered about the chocolate soufflé that I didn't get to try.

Before leaving, they gave us a valentine's day goodie bag with two muffins inside along with a tiara. The muffins were red velvet. I had them the next morning and they were fantastic. One of the best red velvet muffins I ever tried. Much better than Georgetown cupcakes and even better than Baked and Wired.

I had some high expectations returning to Rose's luxury however I was pretty disappointed by the lack of cleanliness, overwhelming amount of salt used, and the cost. It was not worth $400+ for the quantity and quality of the food served. The food was way too salty for me. The service...

2nd Edit: I’d like to add that I really appreciate the accommodations and compensation provided by Kendra and the team in response to the issues I outlined below. While we weren’t able to enjoy our night at Rose’s Luxury, they’ve restored my faith in the restaurant group as a whole.

1st Edit: it’s been 3 weeks since I informed the restaurant about getting sick due to improper food handling, and have yet to hear anything back. 🤷🏻‍♀️ —

Challah bread was great, and the butter was delicious and visually stunning.

The green pea pasta (not seasonal) was much too sweet and oily, and the snowman duc dish was over-sweetened as well.

We really enjoyed the Ragu lamb pasta, the flavors and temperature were spot-on. It wasn’t as ambitious/adventurous as the green pasta, but at least it was done right.

The onion in the lychee salad greatly overpowered the other flavors. To tweak the ratio, there should have been maybe 1/2-1/3 the amount, or they should have soaked the onions in water prior to plating. Too much salt.

The Kalbi dish had no flavor despite having been marinated for 3 days. I had a feeling this might be an issue as soon as the server started pouring more of the Marinade on top of the meat, because that’s very unconventional to add more marinade to Kalbi.

The worst part was that the people handling the food didn’t let the meat cook to temperature, or someone didn’t wash their hands, as my husband and I were both sick the following day (and it was definitely the beef.)

The tres leches cake was dense and dry, and they could have been more generous with applying the Dulce de Leche flavor. Did not have to be that large, but it should have been done right.

The surprise ice cream dessert served in the coconut was “a gift from the server,” and was actually executed much better than the tres leches, but it honestly felt like an apology gift because they knew the cake was going to be a disappointment.

As a few have pointed out in other reviews, The trick of making it appear to be a "gift" also failed miserably as we heard the same claim made multiple times to our left and right. It definitely came off as a mental trick to try to get you to tip more at the end of the meal.

The gift bag they gave us for whatever reason contained temporary tattoos (I would never put a real or fake tattoo on my body,) a handful of raw pasta, and some cheese, along with a recipe. So they chose to serve mediocre food and then expect me to go home and cook some more after spending $300.

The dining room was freezing and loud, and I do not want to listen to trashy hip hop music. It did not feel like an elevated dining experience, but rather a poor attempt to show off how inclusive and cool the restaurant is, while still charging fine dining prices.

Once you win that first Michelin star, it’s easy to draw people in. However, if you want to build a relationship with your clientele, you need to be able to justify your prices by providing an amazing product that you’re able to sustain.

If I didn’t know that much about food and fine dining, sure, the experience might have been “fun.” But for those with more exposure to elevated experiences, the over all execution the restaurant delivered came off as sloppy.

Little Pearl is much more creative, the epitome of a fine dining experience, and...