vic & anthony's houston. our visit to vic & anthony's october 8th was pleasant but not perfect. the food was very good. we ordered a crab cake for an app and was very happy with the taste and texture. we also ordered the pear salad which my wife said was very good except it had alot of large blue cheese chunks in it. you will love it if you like 1 inch squares of blue cheese. it was a little to much for her. i had the lobster bisque and it was good. fordinneri had the prime ribeye. it was cooked perfect (medium rare) and not overly seasoned. my wife ordered the veal milanese and she loved it. beware, it is a huge portion (nearly 12 inches round) and my wife only ate about a 1/3rd of it. we ordered asparagus with a side of hollandaise sauce and the au gratin potatoes. both items were very hot and very tasty. the asparagus was large but cooked perfectly tender. we shared an order of the bread pudding. it had really good flavor, however i was expecting a lighter pudding since they make sure to promote the use of croissants in it. the pudding is about the same as you would get at another place that uses regular bread. the sauce was good, the cinnamon ice cream was very creamy and tasty. the tuile was one of the best parts of the dish. my wife said she could just eat the tuile with the ice cream and have a perfect desert. overall, we were very satisfied with the food. the wine list is extensive and somewhat pricey. they have some solid selections by the glass which is refreshing since my wife and i tend to have different desires for our wine for dinner. we still spend as much as we would on a bottle but we were both able to get the wine we preferred.
the service was good but not outstanding for what i expect from an establishment such as this. we are frequent diners to high end restaurants and have come to expect a certain level of service from everyone in the restaurant when we spend 3-4 hundred dollars on adinnerfor 2. there are a number of things that need to be worked on for this location to be considered as having "polished service" in my book. some examples. we had early reservations for 2 (5:30). we were sat immediately at a table set for 4. the table started being rearranged by several different people to accommodate 2 people. it took the hostess, the guy who brought the bread and water to the table and 2 trips by our waiter to get the table down to having only 2 place settings. it just seemed annoying that all this activity had to occur while we were seated to get the table arranged for 2 and could have been avoided by having the hostess ask us to wait 2-3 minutes while they got the table ready to seat 2 people. the guys that refill the water and assist the waiters are sloppy. they quickly refill the glasses and drip water on the table either from the glass being quickly filled or the pitcher they were pouring from. generally they filled the glass without moving it or if they did pick it up they placed it back in some unusual places. our waiter kept removing bread plates from the table along with any silverware that was on them. the problem was we were still eating the bread with our wine so the waiter had to bring more plates and knives back. there seemed to be a rush to pre bus the table when it wasn't necessary and then they had to bring clean plates back to the table. another thing that popped up was when we had our meal set. the waiter asked me if i would cut into the steak and see if it was cooked the way i wanted. no problem, but by the time i picked up the knife and cut into the steak he had left. the steak was fine and i didn't see the need to harp on it. the service wasn't all like this, in fact outside of these little details i felt the service was attentive. the waiter was knowledgeable on the menu and i felt that they genuinely wanted to provide good service. one thing that we were impressed with was when my wife asked if the left over veal would be good sitting in the car while we were in the theater that night. he asked what time we would be out of the theater and said they would be happy to keep the meal in the cooler and we could stop back by and pick it up.
overall, we enjoyed the meal and i felt that the service was good but not outstanding. it would be easy to correct most of the service issues to take them to the point that i would consider the service outstanding.