Five Palms Steak and Seafood is in the building that formerly housed Café Terra Cotta in the Catalina foothills. The owners are trying out a concept restaurant new to Tucson. It features a fine-dining room; an upscale bar/lounge area; a more casual bar and grill upstairs with a large outdoor dining patio; and a gourmet shop that features wine, cheese, chocolate and various charcuterie.
The fine-dining area of Five Palms takes up about half of the downstairs. The décor could be described as “cruise ship gaudy”—there are beautiful elements to it, but it’s all incredibly overdone. Think dark mahogany-colored wood, lots of plush royal blue and gold accents, stained-glass ceilings and lots of mirrors and chandeliers.
I’m always suspicious of restaurants that don’t list their menus or prices online. Five Palms is one of those, and I can see why. The prices are outrageous, especially given the competition for fine dining just down the street. Our meal for two came to $322 (including tip). It included two appetizers, two entrées, a dessert for two and one glass of wine apiece with each course. I’ve worked at, and eaten at, many fine-dining restaurants. And for that kind of money, the food and service need to flawless.
The menu is heavy on seafood and steaks, and Five Palms offers a good selection of both. But for a fine-dining restaurant, the choice of wines by the glass is dismal. There are 10 reds and seven whites to choose from, but no vintages are listed and the prices range from $6 to $22 a glass. The by-the-bottle selection is better, but it can be difficult to order a bottle for a table when you have people ordering both seafood and steaks.
Once you’re seated, one of the assistant servers comes by with a beautiful hand-cranked meat slicer and offers you Spanish Serrano ham ($9 per ounce); jamon Iberrico, which the server referred to as “black hog ham” ($28 per ounce); and Spanish manchego cheese ($3 per ounce). We decided on an ounce each of the Serrano and the manchego, which are served with crostini.
For appetizers, we opted for the escargot bourguignon ($11) and the half-dozen Fanny Bay oysters on the half shell ($18). The six escargot were served with crostini, and were garlicky, buttery, tender and not at all chewy, though a bit on the oily side. The oysters were fresh and were cleaned properly, but I was disappointed that they were served with only a lemon wedge and standard out-of-the-bottle tasting cocktail sauce.
The entrées were good, but not up to par for the price. I was debating between the four-bone rack of lamb ($69) and the 21-day, dry-aged 16-ounce rib-eye ($66), and ended up choosing the rib-eye. It came with poblano potatoes au gratin and spinach au gratin as the sides. I also ordered a side of mixed mushrooms ($11) to accompany the steak. Ted chose the Scottish salmon ($34), which comes with rice as the side. And as with any fish dish at Five Palms, you get to choose your sauce: Andalucía, Florentina, Five Palms sauce, or en papillotte (which is not a sauce). The sauce options were explained by the server because, just like at Nino’s Bar and Grill, the menu has extremely limited descriptions. Ted opted for the Andalucía, which was supposed to be a spicy tomato-based sauce featuring onions, green olives and shellfish.
My steak, ordered medium-rare, was served rare. But it had great flavor and a nice char. The potatoes and spinach were dismal. The potatoes had just a fleck or two of poblano in them and were seriously lacking in seasoning and flavor. The spinach, which came in a tiny ramekin, had been murdered. It was slimy, stringy and way too runny. And it had the same lack of flavor as the potatoes.
The salmon was tasty, and cooked to flaky, moist perfection, but the sauce and the sides were disappointing. The rice that it came with closely resembled San Francisco’s favorite boxed treat and contained mushy, overcooked, vaguely gray English peas and squares of carrots. And the shellfish in the not-at-all spicy sauce (one shrimp and two clams) were way overcooked, to the point of being chalky.
Dessert was the saving grace of the meal. There is a patisserie cart featuring various items each day for $10 each. And there is a selection of desserts for two on the menu, all at $11.99 per person (minimum of two people to order). We opted for the bananas foster ($23.98), which is prepared and flambéed tableside. It was absolutely delicious. The only flaw was in the service—one of the servers brought out two bowls of ice cream and set them on the table in front of us, before the bananas foster was done, so they had to remove the bowls, add the bananas and sauce, and re-serve them. It was a perfect illustration of the service errors throughout the evening: No one crumbed the table throughout the duration of our meal; servers were backhanding us when serving plates and pouring wine; no one folded napkins or pushed in chairs when one of us got up from the table; both wine and water glasses were allowed to sit empty for several minutes; and the wine was not served in varietal-specific glasses. For a $322 dinner for two, these things shouldn’t happen.
This article appears in Jul 18-24, 2013.
Wowza.
We were there last week and enjoyed it. I couldn’t disagree more with this review.
I can think of lots of other ways to finish the sentence; When you fork over $300 for dinner for two…
Unbelievable! I just moved here from Washington, DC, and have spent some serious money to dine at the best restaurants in DC and NYC. But not for so-so food and service, and not even one bottle of wine! I continue to discover great restaurants in Tucson; I’ll cross this one off my list to try.
Twice too much!
Thanks for the warning.
I’ll stick to anthony’s until the kinks are ironed out.
Great review!! Kill them with honest reality. People in Tucson do NOT wish to spend $322 for dinner. For many, that grotesque amount is one month’s food supply at home, including a very sufficient supply of very decent “jug” wine. Try the Barefoot Cellars 1.5 LT Pinot Grigio or Pinot Noir at Total Wine for $7.97. And learn how to cook.
I am from originally San Francisco, which is by any definition, a foodie’s paradise in quality, innovation, service, wine, & decor. Even at the most difficult of restaurants to get a reservation, and even at the most expensive places, one could not remotely approach a $322 dinner tab for two!
This Five Palms gouge will have to be cut in half to even have a remote chance of survival, while the service has to double in execution! Who the hell does this guy think he is anyway? A Thomas Keller in the foothills? Thanx for the warning…
Hard to imagine anyone with an ounce of common sense spending this much on one dinner for two. It must be nice to have so much money to waste…
I ate there several weeks ago and I felt the same way! I couldn’t fathom spending that type of money for food that wasn’t spectacular, especially in Tucson. I think the price you pay has to do with a lot of pomp and circumstance.
We, two of us, ate at Fleming’s last week, for the first time. We had a good time, a great dinner, and a fine martini – for half the price of 5 Palms. Yes, it’s a chain, but the local folks that work there sure are nice.
Acacia down the street is 100000000000x better!!!!!
Ouch!!! I love true fine dining, food graced by a wizard and an experience which absolutely includes impeccable service. I would gladly pay for such an experience.. Am sad to say that I don’t think I will spend the too many dollars for a gamble here… Oh well maybe wait a bit more to see if they get the kinks out…Tucson has really great food, so don’t give up on our great local eats xo
I love this place..I have had a great experience everytime I have been there. With prices like these it gives people a lot of room to complain. .but just like any other place in the world its operated by HUMANS and a place that big is gonna have some errors along the way. Its always slammed packed full of people and im sure they will do well.
We went. I give the whole complex 9 months.
Was at Bob’s Chop House at Tucson National last Saturday – 6-7 bone rack of lamb 60 bucks. Best meal I’ve ever had in ten years in Tucson, And very nice wines (Chalone Pinot) 11 bucks a glass.
Ew, honestly has anyone seen this place? The decor is terrible. I mean really, did they he get a good discount on the royal blue carpet? Fake wood and everything. The beautiful terra cotta that was formally inte building was muh better the food was outstanding. At five palms everything is cheap and discussing. Waste of time and money. Not to mention terrible service. DO NOT GO!
Their $8 happy hour includes a choice of entree (an entree, not an appetizer) as well as an alcoholic beverage. Both together were $8. I thought the pulled pork sandwich was very good, and the servers were very good, despite being busy. I would never pay $66 for a steak, but I’m cheap.
The $300 you fatuously spent on a single meal could easily support the monthly living expenses and tuition of a student who’s studying at a fine school of nursing in Nogales, Sonora which is just an hour’s drive south of Tucson.
I sent an email to the restaurant when I couldn’t find a menu on the website. I got an email in return that offered to read the menu to me over the phone if I called. Really?
@AzNative hahahahahahahahha! that’s the funniest thing I’ve heard in ages. What a great way to start my day.
My husband wanted to try this place a couple of weeks ago, but we decided against it when we couldn’t find a menu online. I’m glad we didn’t go!
My husband and I have eaten great food all over the world, mostly on the cheap, but also a few memorable high dollar splurges in Paris, Chicago and San Francisco. It sounds like Five Palms aspires to much but falls woefully short on multiple fronts. I think we will pass on this place.
So what is so bad about Ricearoni food snob
“the food and service need to flawless.”
Remember the time you actually had to go to the resturaunt in order to look at their menu….brats.