Steve E.'s Profile

I rarely send food back to the kitchen to be cooked more and I've never had to send food back twice... until tonight.

So why 4 stars? We'll get to that.

When my wife and I first arrived, the place was pretty well packed. Yes, there were tables open, but the greeters were out of menus and had to wait for some to make their way back to the front desk before we could be seated. The greet staff appeared overwhelmed. When we were seated, the person who guided us to our seat (Jason?) didn't really seem to care much about what he was doing.

We had to wait for a bit for a server to show up, but Amy got our drink order and our appetizer order quickly once she made it to our table. The loaded potato skins appetizer was quite good.

We put in our dinner order and got our salads shortly after the appetizer arrived. And this is where things started falling apart. My wife's green salad was fine, but my Caesar salad wasn't as green as it should have been. The iceberg lettuce was turning brown.

Not that we had a lot of time to consider our salads since the entrees arrived very quickly. We both had steaks and baked potatoes. The potatoes were big and fluffy and quite well baked.

The steaks on the other hand... PJ ordered hers medium and I ordered mine medium well. They were both medium rare at best. Hers actually looked rare. We flagged down Amy who was surprised the steaks had shown up so quickly and so obviously undercooked. She apologized and took the steaks back to be cooked more.

Chris, the manager, soon showed up to apologize for the inconvenience and to thank us for our patience. I mentioned the brown lettuce to him and he took the offending salad away. He offered to bring something in place of the salad, but I declined.

The steaks came back and this time... they were maybe medium rare. Maybe. I told Amy the kitchen was making the restaurant look bad. She once again apologized profusely, seemed genuinely upset on our behalf, and took both steaks to Chris. He came by and this time started out by saying he was embarrassed. We mentioned that we'd been at the restaurant in the past and had very good experiences before, but it seemed like this was a really "off" night for them.

He agreed that something had gone off the rails and graciously comped our meals.

The steaks arrived again, but not the same ones. They cooked new steaks for us and this time they were just right. Amy stuck around to be sure as we cut into the middle of both our steaks to check them. They were flavored perfectly, cooked perfectly, and we ended up having a nice meal.

Chris gets points for dealing with us both times things went wrong and for crouching down to our eye level for the second apology and taking responsibility for the mistakes. Completely comping the meals was an unexpected and welcomed gesture. He also went out of his way to make sure we understood that Amy wasn't to blame (we knew that, but it was nice to see a manager have his employee's back like that).

Amy gets points for showing her concern for our satisfaction and for being just as baffled as we were over the obvious poor quality of the preparation of the steaks. Meat shouldn't be red on steaks done medium or above, and the first two were red through and through.

Both of them thanked us for our understanding and for not losing our cool (yes, PJ has mellowed me that much over the years). We got Amy to laugh a bit and she got us to laugh as well by asking if she could get us an "undercooked dessert" with a perfect deadpan expression. She earned her 20%+ (before the comp) tip.

So, even though we had an adventure of poorly timed food service, confused employees, and undercooked food, Amy and Chris went out of their way to make things right, and whoever cooked the new steaks for us showed us what we knew the kitchen was capable of doing. They screwed up, but they took responsibility and handled the situation quickly and professionally. That's why they get 4 stars for what could have been a 2 star performance or worse.

On our way out of Red Rock country, my wife and I wanted to find some place to eat and found this restaurant just before heading back to I-17. Actually, we turned into the parking lot to go to another restaurant, but they weren't due to open for a few hours. We then found Cafe Jose.

My wife had the fish and chips and I had the BBQ beef sandwich. The fish and chips had very generous portions of reasonably well cooked fish. My BBQ beef sandwich was as advertised, roasted beef with barbecue sauce. Fries were good on both platters.

Service was very attentive and the staff seemed to care about what they were doing.

Overall great service, decent food, good prices, and reasonably easy to find even if we were enticed by another restaurant's sign before we happened upon this place.

Even on one of the hottest days of the year in Phoenix, this place had spots that were considerably cooler making it a pleasant morning hike. It's probably a lot nicer during cooler weather.

The volunteers that greeted us were wonderful. They gave us some background on the preserve, invited us to have a look around inside, and gave us insights as to what we'd find when we got to the trails. Since it was our first time there, a volunteer guide took us to a specific point and gave us even more background and information. He helped us map out our first hike and sent us on our way.

There's a large variety of trees throughout the preserve and a few places with water (a pond and a small portion of a river). The trails we went on were reasonably easy to navigate and had many places to sit and take in our surroundings or even wait around for birds or other animals to cross our paths.

We did get to see some lizards and a few birds along the way and we're looking forward to going back for more in the near future and for years to come.

Photographers will want to bring their zoom and macro lenses. Everyone else might want to bring a decent pair of binoculars.

The visitor center has educational displays, brochures for the area and for other Nature Conservancy areas throughout Arizona, restrooms, water and soda for sale, and wonderful volunteers who will help in any way they can.

After hiking around the Hassayampa River Preserve, my wife and I decided to head to Wickenburg for lunch. We'd eaten in other places in the area before so we decided to try something different.

The service was quick and very attentive. The food was OK and pretty standard "cowboy" fare. The salad was OK though the veggies were a bit tired looking. My Western Bacon Cheeseburger was quite good. The fried chicken was a bit overdone and dry, especially the breast though the thigh and leg were moister. The fries were also quite good.

Bonus: breakfast and dinner are served all day.

Decor is a mix of animal heads, antlers, antiques, and western artwork.

They do have the silly "Freedom Fries" listed on their menu, though our waitress called them "French Fries" and Fox News was on the TV, though that was changed to ESPN as we were preparing to leave. Would have expected country music rather than having any news channel playing.

Restrooms could have used some work, or at least an air freshener.

Overall not a bad place to get a decent lunch.

Went on a business lunch and my dining companions and I had a great time with great food and service. A few folks had the tortilla soup and enjoyed it immensely. My chicken taquitos combo was very good. Didn't hear a bit of complaining from anyone at lunch and I was dining with several people who eat there quite often.

Hard to add anything to the rest of the reviews here, but my wife and I were very happy we found this place, though we wish we'd found it just a little earlier in the day as we felt a little rushed at the end of our meal since it was closing time.

That aside, the service was friendly and attentive. Our orders were absolutely right and well prepared using obviously fresh ingredients. Nice feature was how the salads were automatically served with dressing on the side, not on the salads.

We'll be in the area again soon and will very likely be back.

A little tough to find, but well worth it! My wife and I took a day trip from Phoenix on our honeymoon to visit the park for the first time and absolutely loved it.

Aside from the size and quality of the habitats, we were able to get fairly close to most of the animals. They all appeared healthy and very well cared for. The staff was very engaging and really seem to care not only about the animals but about the people visiting the park.

There are lots of different events that you can see or not, but I do highly recommend the safari bus tour. You'll get to see some animals close up and you'll even get to feed a giraffe and a camel.

You can also feed tigers from behind a cage and you can watch the predators eat on certain days if that's your thing.

Observation stations at most of the exhibits are a shutterbug's dream giving safe and unobstructed views of many of the big animals.

You can walk or take any of the free trams to get where you want to go in the park. If you plan on going more than once to the park in a year and don't want a full membership, there's a great option of getting a card that allows unlimited admission (without the membership bells and whistles) for $20 for a year with full price general admission of $36.

My wife and I made a reservation for 15-20 people for an after party following our wedding and reception this past weekend. The reservation was ready as requested. Good thing, too, since we had 19 people in attendance and the restaurant was absolutely packed.

The service was quite slow to start, but once it got going it went well. The food came out reasonably quickly for such a packed restaurant. Our server was friendly and even complimented us at the end of the meal for being such a fun group to deal with.

Our group had a good time, very good food, and decent service. About the only problem we had aside from the slow start to the service was the noise level as there were quite a few birthday celebrations throughout which required several servers to sing and clap loudly. It was a little disturbing for people in our party with sensitive hearing, though we all appreciated the friendly party atmosphere.

I've been meeting with friends here for dim sum for the past few years and also had dinner here a few weeks ago. The food is consistently quite good, affordable, and fresh. The service is generally quite good as well.

My bride and I held our wedding reception here this past weekend in the small private room at the back of the dining room. The service and food were great and our guests enjoyed the dim sum adventure, a first for many of them. Fun and affordable!

The fun part is we'll be able to return to our reception restaurant with our friends anytime we like.

My fiancee and I stopped in while shopping in the area. She had pizza and a side salad, and I had a chicken parm sandwich and fries.

The fries were pretty pedestrian, but prepared well. Fluffy inside and crispy outside with just enough salt. Salad was fresh.

The chicken parm was a little overcooked, but still moist and quite good. The pizza was very thin, but quite tasty. Not quite what we were expecting from a small pizza pie, but surprisingly good.

Service was slow (we were there on a Saturday afternoon with only a couple other customers in the store and a couple of deliveries going out), but friendly. This is obviously a family run business with people who care about the business and their customers. If we're in the area again, we'll be back.