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Three Flames Restaurant

Tonight we attended our annual holiday dinner with the family at Three Flames Restaurant in San Jose.  The staff who greeted us were friendly and quickly seated our party of 10.  The ambiance of the place is great, low lighting and tall ceilings.

The waitress we had was unfortunate and partially ruined the evening.  She was high energy and impatient, at times putting words in our mouths to try to hurry up and take our order.  Yes, we had a large party; no, it was not busy.  So why the rush?  Also due to having a longer table than normal she could only focus on about 5 of us at a time and when done with the half of the table, often forgot to check the other half.

We started off the night with Hahn Pinot Noir 2009, which despite being such a young red turned out to be fairly good.  The waitress had difficulty removing the cork and it was almost comical watching her try.  She quickly and accurately poured out 7 glasses for us.

For dinner I ordered their signature dish, the NY Pepper Steak, with baked potato and the chicken tortellini soup.  The soups and salads came out in a reasonable time.  The chicken tortellini soup was basically a traditional chicken noodle soup, though likely with some flour to thicken it up a bit.  The chicken was very good and tender, including both dark and light meat.  The tortellini were whole and cooked very well, they were soft and held together.  I would definitely recommend it.

Unfortunately it took quite a awhile after that to receive our main dishes.  Upon bringing them out, the waitress proceeded to give me the wrong dish three times, and mixing up several other peoples dishes as well.  During this time, I assume my rare steak was still cooking in the serving dish.  When I finally got my plate, dead last, my steak was cooked to a medium point.  This may or may not have been the kitchens fault as a medium filet mignon was delivered to us as medium-rare borderline rare.  Looking past how cooked my steak was the flavors were great and the steak itself was still very juicy.  The pepper is laid on very thick, almost as a crust.  They however cover that in this delicious sauce with peppercorns, bacon, and chives that thankfully takes the edge off of all of the pepper.  The baked potato was good, but thankfully that’s one of those things that are hard to screw up.  The vegetables that were served with the dish were seasoned very well and tasted like they were cooked in a light oil.  Unfortunately everyone’s vegetables were cold when we got our plates since the waitress took nearly 5 minutes to figure out where each person was.  The restaurant manager was kind enough to bring out some fresh hot vegetables without a hassle.

This experience was certainly my worst at Three Flames.  Usually the service is excellent and the food as well.  However, coming from a place with steakhouses such as The Hitching Post I have a certain standard for how my beef is cooked and Three Flames consistently has cooked them longer than I am accustomed to.  My recommendation for ordering a steak is to order it a degree redder than you would normally in order to receive the dish the way in which you would want it.  The seasoning and sauces are fantastic and I definitely recommend trying their NY Pepper Steak.

For this experience I would rate Three Flames Restaurant:

  • Overall Rating:

     ★★★☆☆ 

  • Taste Rating:

     ★★★★☆ 

  • Value Rating:

     ★★★☆☆