Monday, January 20, 2014

Restaurant Week 2...Chops!



Chops Steakhouse
700 Walnut Street
Philadelphia, PA 19106 

I usually try to take my girlfriend to one steakhouse during one of the two restaurant weeks that Philly offers because it is obviously much more affordable to do so then. The one that we chose this past winter was called Chops. The menu I looked up was very interesting, and the place looked great and had good reviews, so we were pretty excited to spend our evening there. Unfortunately for us, it all went downhill from the moment we stepped in the door.


 
When we were seated, our waiter took his sweet old time getting over to us. Once he did arrive, we ordered our drinks and when he brought them to the table we ordered our food. He walked away and we both took a sip of our drinks. We both made similar faces, because the drinks were straight up awful. Mine was supposed to be a gin gimlet, but it tasted like water and gin with a few cucumber seeds dispersed throughout. The pulp of the cucumber was still very whole as well, which made the drink extremely unappetizing. I was not happy with the start to our meal and I really hoped it was going to get better. 




Next up were our appetizers, fried calamari for me, and gnocchi with mushrooms for her.  My calamari was ok, but nothing amazing. I doused it with a healthily amount of lemon juice, and dipped each bite into the somewhat watery marinara sauce. Her gnocchi was gluey and dense, really rather bad. It was another huge misstep in our meal, and we kind of knew the meal was doomed from there. 



Our entrees were the crab cakes and the filet with mashed potatoes and broccoli. I don’t even know where to begin with the steak. It was cooked well, but it had zero seasoning. The same was true of the mashed potatoes, in addition to them being lumpy and cold. The broccoli wasn’t cooked long enough, because it still had a lot of resistance to it when we bit into it. Again it didn’t have any seasoning at all, so it was another epic fail. The crab cakes had decent flavor, but they didn’t have any lump meat in them, and they really didn’t hold together well. I don’t know how they were made, but I really wasn’t a fan. The sauce on them was bland, and even the addition of lemon couldn’t save these doomed crab cakes. 




We were just looking forward to getting out of there by them time dessert rolled around, but if you can believe it, it actually got worse. Both my slice of chocolate cake and her carrot cake came out freezing cold as if they had been sitting in the fridge or worse yet were frozen and not quite defrosted all the way. To me that means they were bought, not made and it really was presented and prepared poorly. It was the tip of the iceberg for this disastrous meal. I took two bites before pushing it away.

Zero pints for Chops. The service was awful all the way through, with our waiter paying more attention to others than us, but even better service would not have saved this restaurant. The food was below mediocre. I had high hopes for this place going in, but we left with a bad taste in our mouths having paid for a meal that we felt was terrible. I will not be back to Chops and I hope you heed my advice and avoid it too. Actually I heard recently that it has been closed, so I guess you have to avoid it! Cheers!

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Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States
I am a food lover living in Philadelphia.

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