Rube's Steakhouse - Waukee — Restaurant in Waukee

I was so excited to try this place. It was the first time I had been to a cook your own steak restaurant. I made the mistake of reading the health department summary before eating and had to decide whether to stay or leave. If I had been there alone I would have left but didn't want to explain things to the people I was with so I stayed. I will say the steak was delicious as wwre the potatoes with onions and green peppers. I hope the baked beans I ate were ok because one health department violation was that they had been serving beans that were past their expiration date. I assumed at least for now these were fresh but they were cold. Hard to keep a huge tub of beans hot. Also the rings aren't cleaned between times they are used and you are using the same tongs on raw meat and then using them to flip cooked meat transferring bacteria back into cooked meat. They also melted butter that you can put on whatever you want from bread to your steak. There is a scoop and brushes. I had used the brush to put butter on my Texas Toast and the scoop to put butter on my steak but one of the people I was with used the brush to brush butter on his steak and put it back into the tub of melted butter transferring the bacteria off the steak into the entire butter tub. Then at the end of the meal, our waitress couldn't keep getting our individual tickets/bills correct to hand them out to us then when we each have her credit cards to coorespond to each bill, she charges the wrong cards and we had to wait for someone to (hopefully) refund the money. Then she has to come back to the table for us to match up our credit cards to our bill again and then took forever to charge them. We waited probably 20 minutes to pay and we were the last ones in the restaurant. So my excitement faded to concern and became a long night instead of the experience I had...

I can't believe this place isn't out of business yet. It's always dead in there. We've been several times to give it a fair try, but has been consistently disappointing.

First, this is not a traditional steakhouse. You have to grill your own food. For some, this novelty might be cool, but unless you're a pro at the grill, your food may not turn out perfect. Prices are extremely high, especially given that the customers do half the work! We're talking $25 for the cheapest basic sirloin, and $40 or more for a premium cut.

Sides that are included are very minimal. You get an extremely basic salad bar with only iceberg lettuce and a very few veggie options. Other than that, you get either a baked potato or lame and soggy diced fried potatoes. You can also grab some packaged foodservice-style texas toast to put on the grill.

When grilling your steak, you have access to melted butter, and some cheap spices: regular iodized salt (not sea salt), pre-ground foodservice-style black pepper (not frshly ground peppercorns), or garlic salt (not garlic powder). Not a good way to make a tasty steak. If you want some better "real" seasoning blends, tack on an extra dollar each.

Service has typically been mediocre to poor, which is odd given all they have to do is great you, take your drink orders, and bring a check.

For the prices here, your expect premium food all around, and a great atmosphere and experience. Unfortunately Rubes fails to deliver on...

I usually don't write reviews, but I had to share this experience. I went to this restaurant with a group of six, including two kids under seven and a baby. After ordering a salad, we were invited to the meat counter with another table. I liked choosing my own cut, but I was surprised when my waitress told me that I had to cook my $53 steak myself, starting from a cold piece of meat.

I was there without my wife, holding a baby in one arm and a raw steak in the other, trying to get to the grill. I ended up giving the kids to my mom and cooking everyone's meal with my dad. We were supposed to serve our dinner on the same plate that they gave us with the uncooked meat. It was very unsanitary. Our seven-year-old got sick from her steak and threw up last night. I can’t stress this enough. This is not an appropriate food safety practice for a restaurant, and a piece of wax paper is not a safe solution.

On top of that, we didn't eat together as a family, we didn't get to enjoy our salads because they came after the meal, and we wasted our time cooking. I have cooked steaks all my life and visited some amazing steakhouses. This was one of the worst dinner experiences I...