Siena Tuscan Steakhouse — Restaurant in Wichita

My BFF & I decided to have a girls night out for the first time in forever and decided to start with a nice dinner. We definitely chose the wrong place for it. I ordered the Cacio E Pepe, which apparently must translate to undercooked spaghetti noodles served clumped together, covered in a thick bland paste like sauce that was perhaps paper mache or elmers paste. I literally couldn’t even take a second bite. When the waitress asked how it was I told her not good, in fact not even particularly edible. She told me to try and eat some more of it and if I still didn’t like it she’d check back and get me something else. Although she never came back, not until 30 minutes later to ask me if I needed a box for my obviously untouched meal, and when I said absolutely not she just shrugged and said “oh I wish I could’ve gotten you something else”, even though she had never stopped back at the table. My BFF had ordered the Pan Seared Barramundi, and when I asked her how it was, she said at best it was “edible“. Hardly a response one would expect in a fine dining establishment. The manager stopped by our table to ask how everything was and we expressed to him our disappointment. He asked if he could bring us dessert so we looked at the menu and thought how could one go wrong with New York style cheesecake so we said we’d share some cheesecake. Well they managed to mess that up also, it was definitely not New York style cheesecake. It was more like a cookie with some kind of filling in it resembling a Fig Newton. We actually had to ask the waitress if it was cheesecake because we said “this doesn’t appear to be New York style cheesecake” and she said laughed and said “oh yeah, it’s not, but it is a cheesecake, our chef just likes to do an artesian cheesecake and something different”. Had we been paying for the cheesecake off the menu and ordered New York style and this is what were given and charged for we would’ve been extremely unhappy. In fact, it didn’t seem as though many of the things I had seen when looking them up online were available there, including the delicious lobster I saw in the pictures on their Google page Oh and to top it all off, did I mention when we received the bill we were still charged full price for my entire disgusting clearly untouched meal? Not only was the food bad, but the waitress was very smirky and condescending as well, and the overall experience was just very unpleasant. Of all the places we could have chosen for our night out we were not pleased with our selection. We...

I had the pork chop which was pretty good (a little salt heavy) and my partner had the filet which was VERY nicely prepared. I thought the salads were pretty good, too, especially my beet salad. Our server didn't seem to know the food or drink menu very well, our drinks took 5 to 10 minutes every time, the drinks were not nearly as interesting or well-balanced as they read on the menu, and the house-made desserts did not impress.

This was Super Bowl Sunday so we were excited to go to a nice restaurant to avoid some of the chaos. At our table 30 ft away from the TV I could hear it loudly and when I asked our server if it was possible to get it turned down, he explained why it was the volume it was before actually doing something about it which seemed counterintuitive to me. Other than that, the atmosphere was very nice. We also listened to a few servers three feet away from our table loudly discussing which tables were whose. At one point we heard our server yell to a guest "Girls are like that!"

We got relatively functional service though there were plates and drinks not cleared and times when my lack of a beverage was not addressed. As someone in hospitality myself, I was surprised at how rarely we were asked any questions about our experience during it. I tried a spiced gin cocktail they had with nutmeg on the rim. The nutmeg starts to drink off with a very flat, boring flavor followed by a drink that tasted watered down to the point that the Gin couldn't stand out. The wedge salad my partner had was pretty good and I thought my beet salad was very nicely balanced. We tried the stuffed meatball with tomato gravy as well. The flavors were pretty good but the gravy seemed more like a thin marinara and the prosciutto cheese was in exactly one bite of the entire jumbo meatball. For dessert we tried the tuxedo cheesecake which was very rich in the fruit note of the sauce. I think if it had a chocolate cookie crust rather than graham cracker which did nothing to complement the other flavors and maybe some shaved dark chocolate on top, it could balance some of that out. The tiramisu had a good flavor but the texture from the lady fingers was severely lacking. It was more like the creamy part of tiramisu on a spongy cake.

For the atmosphere and the price, we were expecting a bit more but most of the food was fine and we did enjoy their...

The food was good, but not great. We ordered the swordfish and steak entrees and both were well-prepared and to our exact specifications. I thought the steak was better seasoned than the swordfish. This was my second time trying swordfish. The first was at Newport Grill in Bradley Fair, where based on seasoning alone, I would give a slight edge, but both were well-cooked.

For overall value, I thought it was a little on the pricey side, but that's to be expected in most "fine-dining" restaurants these days. We opted not to pay for water. The only time I've ever paid for water at a restaurant was in Vegas at Chef Gordon Ramsey's Hell's Kitchen where it felt like no other options were offered.

For service, I thought our waitress was well-mannered, however, I rated it 3 stars because it took 55 min from the time we ordered our main course to the time it was served. It would have seemed longer had we not ordered an appetizer. Our waitress did however apologize for the delay.

For atmosphere, I rated it 4 stars. The lighting was extremely low-lit, especially toward the middle, away from the windows which made it hard to view the menus. I'm 38 years young and currently have slightly better vision than 20/20, so I'm told.

Final thoughts and suggestions:

I enjoyed myself but I wasn't entirely impressed. Having visited a few previous times, an establishment like this should contemplate having some sort of rotating menu that would not only help drive change and facilitate creativity but would also help maintain a certain level of curiosity in the minds of future patrons, especially those returning.

Lastly, I think this restaurant would benefit from the addition of a live music act being performed in the main dining area (i.e. piano player). This, in my opinion, would help elevate the atmosphere making it a one-of-a-kind restaurant to...