The other day, Nicole was craving a steak and she wanted to go to a restaurant. We live in a small enough town that there are now steak restaurants nearby, so we drove up New Braunfels and tried the Longhorn Steakhouse. Longhorn is a chain restaurant owned by Darden, the owners of Olive Garden, Cheddars, and, until recently, Red Lobster. So, we set our expectations appropriately.
They were on what we used to call a “false wait” when I was worked as a server. There was a 20 minute wait for a table even though the restaurant was half empty. This was likely due to their being understaffed either in the kitchen or the front of the house. No worries, though. This is not an uncommon situation.
Nicole decided to get fancy and ordered a filet with mushrooms on top while I stuck with the chicken fried steak. The food arrived, albeit without the mushrooms she’d ordered. It took another ten minutes to get the mushrooms, and when they arrived, they were clearly straight out of the can whole mushrooms without any seasoning (unless you consider “30 seconds in the microwave” a variety of seasoning).
So, now the steak was cold and it wasn’t even really a filet. You might generously refer to it as a tenderloin, but it was one that had the mealiest texture I’ve ever experienced in a steak. The mushrooms weren’t a suitable steak topping; the hope had been that they would have been chopped and, you know, seasoned. The small handful of french fries were cold when they arrived, but at least they didn’t get any worse with the wait.
My steak was fine. It was a chicken fried steak. Not good, not terrible. fine.
A week later, we were in Austin on Anderson Lane and decided to stop off at Bartlett’s in an attempt to right the wrong that had been done to our taste buds. Bartlett’s had been a Houston’s previously and might as well still be. The menu, the service model, the everything, was pretty much the same as it had been. If you’re not familiar with Houston’s, you might know Hillstone as about half of the Houston’s have been rebranded. It’s the same idea.
So, they’re a chain restaurant, but if you’ve ever been to one, you understand just how different they are. As someone who has been in the chain restaurant business for over three decades, I can assure you that there is no chain in this country that executes what they do like Hillstone/Houston’s. Their standards are absolutely bonkers in a way that probably doesn’t sound rational. They have a small menu and it’s expensive for what it is, but not Expensive-expensive.
They happened to be out of their French dip sandwich the day we went, so I got the chimichurri steak standwich and…I’ve never tasted its equal. The steak was generous, it was perfectly prepared, and it was (naturally) tender enough that it was easy to eat without having to cut it. All the vegetables were fresh, the chimichurri was clearly homemade and absolutely delicious.
The price of both meals was almost exactly the same.
My takeaway from this is that, as a restauranteur, don’t put anything on the menu that you can’t execute. You’d think that would be obvious, but I worked for Bennigan’s and I can assure you that “Can we actually execute this item consistently?”* is a question that was never raised. It’s all good and well to put upscale items on your menu, but if you can’t prepare them, then you’re chase people off. Stick with what you can actually do.
The corrolary, of course, is that when you’re in a questionable restaurant, don’t aim for the stars with your order. You may be in the mood for something really fancy, and you may be tempted to order it if it’s on the menu, but you really should consider whether That Sort of Restaurant can actually prepart that item.
* During the ill-fated Russian food promotion at Bennigan’s, we offered Beef Stroganoff on the specials menu. This item was prepared by combining our frozen beef fajita mix with a sauce made by adding sour cream to our meatloaf gravy, and then serving it on top of microwaved noodles we kept around for our ziti entree. This was, from a taste standpoint, one of our more successful Frankenstein offerings. My advice was always “stick with the Monte Cristo and the potato skins.”