Grill on the Alley

Donna Chen, says:

• Food:

  3/5

• Vibe:

  3/5

• Service:

  2/5

• Value:

  1/5

• Overall:

  2/5

Went to Grill on the Alley for a friend's birthday party (large table of 10 people). Grill on the Alley is your traditional steakhouse with lots of mahogany wood and waiters in black pants and crisp pressed white shirts, which translates to mucho expensive food. Started off with the crab cake appetizer for $15 (yes, that's singular cake). Cake was full of tender crab meat chunks (as opposed to crab cakes that have more bread crumbs than crab meat), but pretty small for $15. Petite sirloin was alright, a little underseasoned, and cannot justify its $40 pricetag. Overall, I was underwhelmed with the value of the restaurant.

Waitstaff was barely present except for when they brought out each course. A couple of people at the table actually had to request another glass of wine as their goblets sat on the table empty for what seemed like an eternity. But hey, why should they care? They got the auto-gratuity of 20%, and the bill is the sneaky kind where you don't immediately realize the auto-grat was already charged (there's an additional blank for tip) unless you closely examine it. Tricky, tricky.