The Keg Steakhouse -- Canada and United States
 

Moderators... I can't remember if a thread like this goes here because it's too specific. If not move it and just let me know.

I read with watering mouth at the "Best Steakhouses" thread. I love a good New York Strip (medium well please, forgive me) or a good steak.

Recently met up with a few buddies in Canada and for a change of pace went to the Keg Steakhouse which is a chain of restaurants throughout Canada and I think several U.S. cities like Bellevue Wa.

Let's say if we were measuring it like a steak I had a half done experience.

Nice atmosphere. I went to the bar and order a regular Black Russian which was filled about one inch in the glass. I expected a little more generous Black Russian but maybe they are limited by local liquor laws.

A very nice wine selection and decently priced (one major PAWS UP for Keg is taht you can get good food and good wine at a good price.)

The food was right on the money... a very nice French Onion soup with Spanish onions and a very generous cheese topping, warm and fresh.

My New York Strip steak was done right, medium well with a nice touch of garlic flavoring. There was also a goat cheese topped ribeye which a friend tried and loved it. My potato had to be sent back - wanted the works and got butter only. The works were very generous.

That was the big problem with the Keg: the service. Staff was friendly but somewhat confused and flawed in teh food delivery. Several of my friends got the wrong items or wrongly prepared items. Maybe it was an off night.

Desert was nice... a creamy New York styled Cheesecake. Because of the service we were sent after dinner drinks called a "Sicillian Kiss." A nice surprise.

I would definitely do the Keg again because of the quality adn the variety of the food and the fact you don't have to pay a fortune for a good dinner. One warning: prices can vary according to the Keg's location.

One thing I wish the Keg would change food wise: please serve escargot in the original shell. Makes me miss Paris. They ahve escargot but in a wierd sauce.

On reflection The Keg was much better than some other chain restaurants(pardon me but I had only ONE good experience at Wollensky's... and that was almost eight years ago! It's gone down hill since.)

I ate at one in Dallas (yes, I know) and had a similar kreppy experience.

One of my co-workers used to work in a Keg in BC and he was telling us what "witty banter" they'd use before they did, Spooky and funny.

I've eaten at the one in FtWorth, TX and had one of the best salads I've ever had! We sat at the bar and were drinking wine and had tried a couple different ones all in the $7/$8 a glass range. The bartended offered us a sample of two other wines which we liked and each got a glass of. When we got the bill we saw that those particular glasses of wine were like $14 each. Knowing what we were already drinking that night I think the bartender should have mentioned it was double in price or sampled us something in the price range we had been purchasing in.

Although we did find a $20 bill on the ground in the parking lot and not a single person was around so we figure that made up for it.

Eaten in a keg in toronto, Keg mansion twice that was good, good steak well cooked, and had the pleasure of eating in the old montreal branch, that was really good steak, really well cooked and the waiter was quick with advice about my steak that i still use everywhere.
The thing with the keg is that they are basicly the best chain steak houses i know , they arnt the best resturants i know.

The Keg can be surprisingly good at times -- our last visit was during their Lobster promotion and their Steak Newburg was remarkably delicious. They do have their off nights but overall they are pretty consistent.

The Keg was WAY better than Ric's Grill, another chain steakhouse without a branch in Vancouver. The branch of Ric's Grill we went to was in Whistler and it was god awful. The saving grace was we only had the steak there, we had our appetizers at the Four Seasons in Whistler and after the meal, skipped dessert and had it at the FS again.

In Vancouver, Morton's is good but I feel the best steak in Vancouver is at Gotham. But for the price, the Keg is hard to beat.

Ate at a Keg in Montreal-I know I know"with all of the good food in Montreal why bother with a chain"but it was right around the corner from the hotel(Springfield Suites)amd I was tired,and I wanted something simple-like the excellent roast beef that was on the menu that night.
Verrrry butch atmosphere-service was a little confused but sweet.

Keg Resturants is never a bad choice in Vancouver but the same owner also owns Gotham Steakhouse and you cannot compare the two. The Keg IMHO is an excellent value steakhouse while Gothams is superior in food quality, ambience and price.

CousinNick and I are big Keg fans, especially when traveling through smaller Canadian cities such as Kelowna and London. It's not the best steak I've ever eaten but it's very good and accurately cooked, and they do good side dishes (the lobster gratinee appetizer for example). It is, as the previous poster noted, a good value steakhouse, but it's getting a little too expensive for me to vociferously recommend it.

The last time we were at one (in Denver after everybody else had left the Cubs Do), we spent $70 each for four courses (including lobster tail and lobster gratinee) and booze. I thought that was a little high, but the meal was very good. By comparison, in the last few months around Chicago, I've spent $63 for two mediocre courses and one drink each at Harry Caray's, $80 for a very fufilling three-course meal with booze at Sal Y Cavaro, and $59 for two good courses and no booze at Gibson's.

I was pleased by the "baseball sirloin," so called because it's
the size and shape of a softball (maybe I was lucky), I think.

Yes, the keg, all of the price of a really good restaurant without the food, service and ambiance to back it up. It's roughly Canada's version of the outback and it seems to prosper due to Canada having a sparse population that is well spread out across a vaste landscape with few restaurant choices. You'll get a second rate steak, first rate bill all served to you by someone who has taken this up as a part time job to help put you through school.

Wanna know why your drink was so small? Corporate drink policies. How does 1 ounce hit you? Liked that cheese cake, huh? How much do you want to bet that it was Sara Lee restaurant brand? The service was bad because the person serving you was not a professional. They're someone working in what is little more than a fast food chain. You want service, go to a real restaurant and have a professional person wait on you.

"Ate at a Keg in Montreal" Your disclaimer doesn't stop you from being harassed for this. You were in Montreal and ate at a Keg? That's like saying you were in Rome and went to Starbucks for coffee or Chicago and went to Subway for pizza. I had to hit myself in the leg when I read that.

"Keg Resturants is never a bad choice in Vancouver". True, it's a terrible choice. Eating at an expensive second rate chain steakhouse while you're in one of the best seafood cities in the country is reprehensible. There are so many great options in that city. It's a shame that you wasted your money on a keg.

People, there are these things called real restaurants that owned and operated by real chefs. They aren't franchises with kids serving you and some guy off of the street cooking for you. They are real places with professional staff who aren't, "just doing this while they find something better". You're all grown ups im sure. Why not eat at adult places. It's odd in the current North American culture all you have to seemingly do is franchise something and people line up. Even if it is something bland, generic and overpriced as the Keg.

Now that we've all been b*itchslapped' w/the obligatory 'arrogance' post of the thread :rolleyes: , my take...

I've eaten at two Kegs... Aldergrove, BC and just last night at near the YYZ airport. While I'd take a piece of beef from the Hitching Post in Casmalia, CA any day before the Keg, it was a pretty good dinner. Ribeye, however slightly overdone. The four customers I had w/me last night all enoyed their steak too.

I think we ALL agree that there are better choices out there than the Keg. No doubt. However, this thread hapens to be about just that.. THE KEG. I would suggest that if anyone wants to trot in on their Napolean-sized horse and suggest that the lot of us are residents of an evolutionary cul-de-sac for eating at one, they can pretty much find a way choke on their horse.

... and if by chance you're obtuse enough NOT to get it, this means you, thegeneral.

Our team used to like to go to happy hour at one of the Kegs in Dallas. It was five minutes from the office, the appetizer selections were good, drink prices comparable with every other restaurant in the area - but mainly we all liked the very large bar that gave us plenty of space to have several of us but also not be sitting on top of the next table.

That said, its not the place I'd go for an awesome steak. I've had decent steaks there - but in Dallas, there are too many other great steakhouses in the area to think of that as the "good" option. That said, we go there for other reasons - because it meets everyone's budget, because its in a central location, because some people like to know "what to expect" and therefore like the chain experience.

I personally don't appreciate the tongue-lashing from the general. Its very presumptive to assume when traveling that we all have rental cars, time to break away from clients who might be perfectly happy with a chain, colleagues willing to go somewhere unfamiliar, or the schedule that allows for any advance planning. When I first started traveling I was more snobby about my restaurant choices and sought out certain types of places - but after a while (and about 60 pounds gained), I learned that sometimes it was just as easy on the road night-after-night to eat somewhere that I knew if I ordered X entree, I'd get what I expected. (Having been very ill in a couple of hotel rooms and still having to be on client site at 7 am takes some adventure out of you!)

Do I miss a gem from time to time? Probably. And I still plan and visit some places that get rave reviews... but I've also decided that a 30 minute predictable stop at Chilis for a salad is a lot better than driving around an unknown town trying to figure out if Joe's Tratorria is good, will have something I like, and can get me back on the highway before dark.

I took a group of R & D people that reported to me for a Christmas Dinner at a Keg Steakhouse in Toronto a couple years ago. One of the technicians asked if it was OK to take a doggy bag home. I thought it was an unusual request but of course said yes. During dinner, he was the 1st to have a completly clean plate and I commented on the need for the bag. When the waiter asked if we wanted desert, everybody said no. Just then, the guy requests a full halibit dinner to go. I was too far in shock to say anything. I guess his idea of a doggie bag and mine were very different.

The next day, he came to me privatly and apologized. He told me that his wife scolded him when he brought her the dinner and explained what a doggy bag really meant. I had to laugh. He was a recent transplant from Jamaica and made an innocent mistake.

Regarding the food, I thought it was pretty good. It wasn't as high quality as some steaks in Chicago, but on the other hand, it wasn't as high priced either.

Message to thegeneral, if dining at the Keg is so beneath you, how do you know so much about it?

My first experience at the Keg was in Niagara Falls over the summer. It was on a high floor with nice view of the Falls and evening light show. Food and service were decent, but a bit overpriced. but then again, pretty much everything in NF was overpriced, and the poor US conversion right now doesn't help either.

In the end, the view probably tips it from "do not recommend" to "recommend"