Flaming- The Open Flame

Last week we were very lucky, as we won some money on the Lotto and decided to use it to have the garage door fixed.  This cost us a lot less than expected, so after a really bad day at work, I asked my husband if we could use some of the money to get some takeaway pizza’s as I just didn’t have the energy to make the spaghetti bolognaise that was on my meal plan for that night.

Instead of getting takeaways we decided to go out for supper as a family.   This is an extremely rare treat as there are 6 of us in my family and, bless my husband and son, they are very big eaters. We decided to take the kids to a steak restaurant for dinner. The two younger ones had never been to this particular restaurant as Kosher restaurants are much more expensive than non-kosher ones. We went to ‘The Open Flame’ a kosher meat restaurant in Glenhazel.

The service was good, the tables and décor in keeping with the type of restaurant that Open Flame aspired to be, the lighting was dim, possibly too dim as I like to see what is on my plate. They serve a little platter with pieces of pita bread, with a small pickled salad, humus, crushed garlic in oil and green chilli salsa for dipping.  This was gone in seconds.

The waiter took our order, writing it down in his note book, our drinks arrived timeously and then it all went downhill.

The few times we have been to the Open Flame Restaurant, we have had the most amazing meals, so I thought this would be an easy review to write.

My husband, son and two daughters ordered the ribs, one daughter ordered it with onion rings and the others had chips. My eldest daughter and I ordered the scotch fillet medium rare and I chose onion rings. The meal arrived with chips for everyone! We sent it back.

My family thoroughly enjoyed their ribs which were ‘finger licking good’!   However, when I cut into my steak, I found that the steak knife was dull and thought this was the reason I could not cut into, what should have been, a butter soft steak. I turned on the torch on my phone only to discover that, besides dull blades, my steak was actually still raw. Back went my food!

Take two and I cut into my now, supposedly medium scotch fillet, and still struggled.  The steak was chewy and not tender at all and I then discovered there were still places where the meat was raw.

The head waiter was very professional, offering to take my steak off the bill. However, since I had already eaten 90% of it, this would have been wrong, in my opinion. He did give us a complimentary ice cream which was very welcome.

We saw some friends there eating burgers, which looked amazing! They were very happy with their meal.

Due to us being on a fairly strict budget it will be a long time before we eat there again, and probably longer, following the bad meal.

The rest of my family really enjoyed their dinner last night and are keen to go again.