Good company and good weather. It is very telling...

Good company and good weather. It is very telling that these are the only two good things we can say about our dining experience since they are both outside the control of the restaurant. We had high hopes for this visit, particularly because we rarely have the opportunity to go out to enjoy ourselves. I'm the one that suggested Chef Geoff's on New Mexico Ave as I've enjoyed meals at the Tysons location. Chef Geoff's really let us down.

I ordered the steak which is served with a port wine shallot sauce and blue cheese fondue and requested the cheese sauce on the side. When it arrived, there was a weird-looking orangeish sauce on the side and nothing that looked like cheese sauce. When we finally tracked down the server (as my steak sat, getting cold), she agreed that this didn't look like cheese sauce. While we awaited her return, I tried my steak, and it was extremely dry and tough. When she finally returned with the cheese sauce, I asked about the port wine shallot sauce because the steak didn't seem to have any on it. She first claimed that it was there "around the steak". I said, okay, but it seemed like a lot less sauce than I had had before with the same dish at the Tysons location (you couldn't see any sauce at all). I then tried to salt the meat to pull what flavor I could out of it. Nothing would come out of the salt shaker so I opened it - it was one big clump. That's OK, I thought, I'll get another shaker. I went to an empty table and tried their salt shaker. Same result. So, the next time we saw the waitress, I asked if I could have some salt and explained that I couldn't get any out of the two salt shakers because they were clumps of salt. At that point, she told me that the weird-looking orangeish sauce was the port wine shallot sauce. She indicated that she knew I had not asked for it on the side, that she had placed the order correctly, and the kitchen had made a mistake. However, she did NOT offer to correct the mistake - to us, this is the worst a restaurant can do - you admit the order is in error, but don't offer to correct it. Rather, you expect the customer to live with the kitchen's mistake!

Next, I waited for the server to return with useable salt, as my steak continued to get cold. Finally, I went to another empty table for yet a third salt shaker (the server had taken the first two so I had no ability to try to salvage some salt out of them). The third shaker worked, but by that point my steak was room temperature. I choked down what I could of the dry steak, alternately trying to dip it in the orange sauce/cheese sauce or add salt to it in a vain attempt to salvage some flavor.

Meanwhile, after my request for salt, the server disappeared for half an hour. During our 1.5 hour meal, our server NEVER refilled our water glasses. The drinks we ordered were perhaps the worst that we've had in a restaurant.

We had gone out with high hopes for a rare evening out, away from the kids. We returned home thinking about the worst dining experience we can recall and bitter disappointment.

Oh, in case you're wondering, the server never returned with the salt.
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I sent this info to Chef Geoff's. In response, David Lynch, the General Manager, sent me an email offering to send a gift card if I provided my address, and asking that I let him know when I return. That was on June 12. I responded the same day with my address, and that I would consider returning because of his nice response.

It's now June 23, and I still have not received the promised gift card. So much for follow-through after being notified of a terrible experience - It seems like Chef Geoff's doesn't really care about customers after all.