Although we still find the bar one of the nicest places in Austin, The Driskill Grill has evolved into a total waste of time and money, and once-gracious service has turned uncomfortable. Get ready for a dinner-length monologue of name-dropping, audible scoffs, and flagrant mispronunciations of “sous vide” and “amuse-bouche.” Warm lighting and a gilded Western-frontier vibe still give Austin’s grand old hotel restaurant a transportive bank-robber appeal. And robbed you may feel, when your $100-a-head meal begins with something like a medicinal lemon sorbet and dense, chewy baguette. Protein mains are still prepared competently, including a tender, herb-crusted lamb chop, and expertly seared marlin with buttery black quinoa studded with mustard greens—like an upmarket riff on black-eyed peas and collards. But much of the menu fails spectacularly, from blandly dressed frisée to tough, chilly beef tartare adorned with a uselessly small dollop of caviar and two cooked and shredded quail eggs. Caesar salad has been overdressed (albeit with a pleasant anchovy tuile), and pork belly over-braised to chewiness.

Almost none of the wine list’s words are spelled right, but worse are the prices: there’s no Burgundy below $100, and the only Spanish wine costs $88. By the glass, it’s overbearing California stuff practically all the way; $14 might get you a Louis Martini Cab that’s been open too long. Rarely have we seen a restaurant of which we once thought so highly fall this far and this fast.