If you thought it impossible for the flagship restaurant of the Schiller/Del Grande empire to reinvent itself as something even flashier, more upmarket, and more of an “it” restaurant than Café Annie, its previous incarnation, then you’d be wrong. Even more pomp and circumstance and even more showy interior design attend this ambitious new entry into the most elite of Houston social spheres.

We must salute the reliable execution in this kitchen, and we must respect, too, the decision to hew to tradition—to some extent, anyway—with a selection of dishes from the old Café Annie, including the classic roasted rabbit with rabbit enchiladas and red mole, which captures its audience not with adjectives but with simple, comforting flavors.

But there’s a dark underside to that practice: just when you thought this restaurant group couldn’t get any more pompous or self-important, the chef historically dates the introduction of each dish on the menu, as if to suggest that generations hence, high-school history teachers will be leading interactive class debates over the specifics of the moment in time when Robert Del Grande was possessed by an unimaginable genius and had the idea of searing ahi tuna rare and serving it with ginger slaw (”circa 2009”) only 15 years after every midrange restaurant in San Francisco did it.

The feeling of the place follows suit: although the lighting is right and the gleaming interior impressive, there’s a pomposity to it all—not to mention the outlandish volume, requiring you to yell to your date even in the most furtive corner of the dining room. Still, at its best, this restaurant turns out some fascinating flavors, spiking a martini with seriously smoked tea, or adorning maple-cured quail with a wild-mushroom chili, venison sausage, and cornbread dressing—a sort of homage to Texas Hill Country that’s impossible not to stop eating.

But move across the menu, and turbulence awaits. Corn-husk-roasted sea scallops with poached egg and bacon grits, like a million-dollar take on a Waffle House breakfast, would have been the best dish on the menu—if not for the fact that at our last visit, the scallops were totally off, bracingly fishy. Disturbingly, the simplest dishes are often the worst: “wood-grilled king salmon,” for instance, feels like little more than a thin, puny, uninteresting sockeye cut, cooked appropriately rare. A $40 wood-grilled ribeye (said our server, assumingly: “medium?”—can you believe that we had to talk him down to medium-rare?), advertised as USDA Prime, comes out with little of the melty marbling we associate with that cut or that grade, and its steak fries come with a radioactive-orange-colored dipping sauce that’s an absolute dead ringer for the sort of sweet-and-sour sauce that comes with those deep-fried dough strips that start a fast-food Chinese-American meal.

What could RDG possibly be thinking, serving that sauce? Or that piece of salmon? However high the high points may be, and however consistent the execution—cooking meats properly to temperature, expertly frying oysters—these recipes are too often failures, their ingredients too often inferior. It may be great business, but it’s not great food, and the wimpy concepts are further diminished by the rip-off prices. Even a showstopping vanilla cake with butter cream and raspberries, a simple-sounding dessert that blows us away with indulgent richness and silky smoothness, can’t rescue RDG from colossal disappointment at about $100 per head. If this is what remains of old-boy Houston, then we’re thankful for the new guard.

We were DOUBLE BILLED for $700 and Food quality has DROPPED.

We had dinner for 6 including 3 different, $200+ bottles wine last thursday night.

While discussing the wine choice, one of the guests noted he could see the staff check the wines out of the cellar (smart inventory control).

When the bill came, they charged us not for 3, but 6 bottles - 2 bottles of all 3 wines - over $700 extra. The waiter lightly apologised, and removed the extra 3 from the bill. I asked to speak to Robert, the owner, to hear he had just left for the evening. The manager finally came over and again apologized and briskly walked away.

With such tight inventory control, WHY were we double billed?

The food was not up to par as it was just 1 and 2 months ago. They added 25% tip on our party of 6, to the food and FULL price of the wine. Adding 25% to the full price of the wine NOT standard tipping etiquette and improper. Adding 25% to a table of 6 is VERY unusual. 15-20% on food for a table of 8 is much more common. NOTE: The 25% is why I noticed the extra bottles of wine.

I wonder if the decrease in quality of food and service coupled charging for items that are not on the bill is why the restaurant was only half full on a Thursday night?

NOTE: We are typically dine at Tony's, DaMarco's and Mark's in Houston. Daniel and Le Bernadin in NYC as well as French Laundry in Napa. We know good food and service - This is NOT it.

Jim P - 2010-04-20 14:28

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