"To celebrate a special work milestone, my husband wanted a great surf and turf meal and he'd never eaten at Capital Grille. We arrived early to have a cocktail in the bar, which is richly appointed and beautifully decorated for the holidays. It was packed, but service was professional and pleasant. It was clear the staff was hustling, turning bar tables quickly, and our server mentioned it was the busiest night of the year so far. We enjoyed a cocktail and then ordered a bottle of wine that was delicious and well-priced. We cleared the bar tab when our dining room table was ready and our wine was delivered to the table. Our server introduced himself and we suggested we'd be ready to order pretty quickly. My husband ordered the tenderloin and lobster tails. As a vegetarian, I knew there were very limited options for me, so I ordered the beet goat cheese salad with pistachios and ordered a shareable wild mushroom side. That's when things started going downhill. Thank goodness they bring a basket of warm breads because our meal took at least 30 minutes to arrive. The assistant servers were friendly, but our captain never came by again. My salad was very tasty, but the mushrooms and steak and lobster were lukewarm. It was obvious they'd been holding for a while, which should be unacceptable for a $65 entree. We finished our meal and would have had dessert and an after-dinner drink to complete our splurge, but couldn't get our captain's attention, so we decided we'd go elsewhere. Then we waited another 15 minutes for the check; I finally asked another captain to help us. When we paid, we did tell our captain that we were unhappy with the service and food and as we were leaving, a manager offered to refund our meal. We declined that, but we'll take our future celebrations elsewhere."
