Steelhead Diner – 19 May 2007

So the month of May had us dining at the Steelhead Diner located in the “touristy” Pike Place Market. Its gimmick is that they try and buy all their ingredients from the “touristy” Pike Place Market, which is a pretty good idea and works very well, especially for the tourists. In fact the first thing our waiter asked us is if we were all from Seattle. The ambiance is really cool. It was very busy when we were there and the noise level reflected it. The décor was upscale diner. The menus were on our placemats which is a good idea at first but we had utensils, water glasses, and bread plates to contend with while trying to decide what to eat.

Wendy ordered a half order of the halibut special as did Aaron who also order the heirloom beet salad to start with. Travis ordered cod and Lenny ordered the burger medium well (remember this for later). I ordered the Beecher’s (cheese shop located in the market) cheese curds flash fried to start and the pork tenderloin.

I also ordered a glass of merlot but my waiter brought me a Syrah because he said it was better wine but told me he would only charged me for the price of the Merlot, a savings of about $1.25. A nice gesture but I think it was a mis-pour.

I was incredibly disappointed by the cheese curd appetizer. I thought it was going to have a sharp taste but what I got were mozzarella sticks no better than one would find on the menu at Red Robin. A mis-order on my part. It was extremely pedestrian for their menu. All our food was delicious except for Lenny’s burger which came extremely on the rare side. I give props to Lenny for grinning and bearing it and eating most of it. Now I like my burgers on the rare side and I wouldn’t have eaten his burger, it was nowhere near “medium-well”. I would like to add here that once our food was delivered that was all we saw of our waiter.

When he finally came back to help clear our plates, Aaron brought the state of Lenny’s burger to his attention. His response was something to the affect of “well I walked by and everything appeared to be fine.” That was not an appropriate response for the type or restaurant that The Steelhead Diner claims to be. The waiter agreed to comp a dessert so we picked out a nice selection. All were delicious.

When we were finished we finally got the check. At the top of the bill was a pilsner. None of us had beer during the evening. We brought it to the attention of our waiter and he wasn’t apologetic. He just said, “Oh, I’ll take that off.” No “I’m sorry”, or even an “oops”. It was quite fishy (no pun intended). So over all, really good food! And really bad service! I think we all agreed we would never go back.