User Reviews
A very good friend of mine suggested that we tried Ice House Cafe for our anniversary dinner. I have to say that it was a wonderful experience. We arrived at 7:00 and was promptly seated by the Matre d'. Right away we could tell the place had a mystical feel to it. It carries a lot of history and it is elegent but not pretendious. We were welcomed by our server whom I found very courteus and friendly. We had a good conversation and I was very impressed by the history of the restaurant. Ice House has been at this location since 1978. As we settled in, I took notice of the extensive wine menu. Our server made us feel right at home He went through the specials and recommended some popular dished on the a la carte menu. He also seemed to be very knowledable with wine and we order a bottle of Caymus Cab. We started with the Oysters Oscar on the special and the clams on half shell. They were absolutely wonderful, delicate and flavorful . My wife ordered the halibut special with champagne dill sauce and I ordered the beef tenderloin. I have to say it was the best beef tenderloin I ever had. The cooking was supverb and the sauce complemented the dish nicely. We finished our dinner with Irish Monk (coffee liquor) and home made tiramisu. I had tiramisu in many places and what we had at the Ice House was the best. What a wonderful evening for celebrating our anniversary. Ice House Cafe is truly a unique place. We stayed for the live jazz with couple more Grand Marnier.
Raymond Daz, Potomac
Dislikes: Morton Steak House
Reviewed: May 30 2008
We made reservations for 2 for dinner at 7pm on Valentine’s Day and when we arrived we were promptly seated. Our waiter quickly came and brought us our menus and took our wine order. We had never been to the Ice House but had heard very good reviews and thought that we would try it. After flagging down our waiter (Chris) we each ordered appetizers. After waiting for over 40 minutes we flagged Chris down to ask about our appetizer. He said the kitchen was running slow. After waiting just over an hour the appetizers came. The wait time had been ridiculously long. We had both ordered the tenderloin for dinner. One of us ordered it medium well the other medium. Chris did not write our order down and when I questioned him about would he be able to remember what we ordered he said it would not be a problem. Our dinner was brought to our table 1 ½ hours after we sat down. It turned out that both dinners were way undercooked both were rare to medium rare. Chris did not check to see if our tenderloin was cooked correctly and he was so busy we could not get his attention. It appeared that he was waiting tables for the entire back room and many front tables as well and was not able to provide us service. We were not able to eat much of our tenderloin since they were so undercooked and decided to take them to our dogs. We tried to flag Chris down and finally got to him. We asked for our check and paid our bill and then left. Adding insult to injury we had noticed that Chris was given the ladies of each table a flower but because he was too busy he did not do so for us. We had a terrible Valentines Dinner and several times we were ready to walk out. It seemed that the staff at the Ice House really did not care about their customers. The server was inattentive, the kitchen very slow, the cook did not prepare the meal correctly. We were very disappointed and do not understand how the Ice House could have had such a good reputation considering our experience. I would hope that you would share our experience with your manager/owner so that they might make the proper corrections in case they really care about customer satisfaction and the Ice House reputation.
Steve Deutsch, Oak Hill, VA
Likes: L'Auberge Chez Francois
Dislikes: McDonalds
Reviewed: 2-14-08 |
