Palm Restaurant

03/14/11

iLove this restaurant ~ iKnow you will

by iPattye

iSpeak for the ladies: Take me here!! Simply beautiful restaurant and the food presentation purely awesome.

11/16/10

Ok

by pyram

good service. ok food

11/29/08

Very Disappointed

by PrimeBeefLover

This is my first restaurant review. I've enjoyed prime steakhouses throughout the country and was looking forward to trying this one especially since my wife and I were attending a concert at the nearby Nokia Theatre. Well, it didn't quite pan out to be the experience that it's reputation precedes.

Beautiful Christmas tree and an inviting ambiance. The food was another matter. After the very good Caesar salad, my wife's gorgeous face expressed a look of disappointment I haven't seen in quite a few years. Her salmon, as she conveyed, was tasteless. The cottage fries and fried onions were not even on a level of supermarket quality. In fact, one of the cottage fries actually hurt one of my crowns. Ouch.

My 16oz. N.Y. Strip wasn't a total disaster however there wasn't much to tout. I'm accustomed to an attractive, juicy, sizzling steak arriving at my table whenever I pay more than $35 for it. This one looked like it was sitting around for a bit and wasn't very juicy. So so consistency and an underwhelming flavor. I've had much much better locally at Mastro's, L.A. Prime and Ruth's Chris. My reigning champs though are Peter Luger and Gene & Giorgetti's.

The $145.00 we spent on this meal was not a good value and the service met the bare minimum.

• Pros: Location, Ambience
• Cons: Food, Value (or lack of)

07/19/08

Maybe I've been jaded by the delectable New England lobsters I grew up with in the Northeast, but the one my husband ordered was a huge disappointment!

by sarelf

He and his buddy decided to share a 51/2 lb. behemoth. They requested that it be boiled, rather than split and broiled. The server said that the kitchen could do that. However, when the lobster was brought to the table, it was beautifully presented, but broiled and split! When my husband questioned her, in quite a haughty tone, she insisted that "this is the way we serve our lobsters." My husband repeated his original request., and the server assured him that the lobster was fresh, and he would not find it dried out (as he feared). However, our tasting proved otherwise. Although the crustacean was quite sweet and

well textured, we found that it required an inordinate amount of butter to counterbalance the dryness. Although I would have sent the $100+ plate back to the kitchen, the guys decided to finish it, rather than waiting for another selection to be prepared. (Our friend's wife and I had already begun our to eat.) As for my dinner, I had the pepper-seared ahi. It was ample, fresh and generally tasty. But it was presented like a brick on an iceberg...no greenery or imaginative vegetable enhansements...just a slab of tuna on a white plate. When the server had taken our order, she curtly told me, "Yours comes with nothing." (I was believer and ordered the spinach as an accompaniment.) It was a good thing, because my a la carte offering would have been pretty boring without it. As I reflect on our mediocre and expensive experience, it reminded me of why I had not been back to the Palm in nearly 20 years. It's too bad that such a beautiful new restaurant in the revitalized downtown area was not able to dazzle us with great food and friendly service.

10/22/07

Overpriced. Decent Food. $$$$$ grubbing waiter

by likefoodie

Our family of 8 went to the PALM for the first time in celebration of a birthday. I made reservations so we were seated right away. The management must have told the server that we were celebrating a birthday so he mentioned that they had something special. The food was generally fine. The main problem that I had was with the overcharges. I guess each item was priced individually. So, you were charged for each water, steak, sides, etc. Seeing the main course, I expected to spend a lot at the restaurant.. $48 for steak. I'm okay with that. Additional for each side dish. Okay. So, I ordered 3. Additional for salad. Okay. So, I ordered 4 of those. The server came around near the end of the main course and said that the restaurant had a surprised dessert platter for us. When the platter came with different desserts, I was impressed. So I thought, "Wow, all this selection on the house?? How sweet of them." My mother decided to take care of the bill before I could see it. Later, when I saw the bill I was shocked to see that I was charged double for the sides, additional for some things that I never ordered nor received, and for all the single dessert dishes that the server decided to put out there. Note: we're not even huge fans of dessert so I was annoyed that we were charged an additional $60 for this dessert plate. We were easily charged over $100 over what I had really ordered and I felt cheated of the details of this blind costing "special dessert" thing. I don't know if I'll want to go back for fear of pushy waiters that randomly order whatever the heck they feel like charging so that they can get a fat tip.

• Pros: Good ambience - old Hollywood caricatures on wall. Food is decent.
• Cons: Overpriced for meat that's not always properly cooked to customer's desire.