The Emporium: An American Brasserie

Casey Speagle

The food was excellent. The service unfortunately left us hanging. We were first sat at a very unstable table outside. The moment we sat down I barely leaned on the table and almost tipped the whole thing over! Very dangerous. We very visibly tried fixing it and everyone ignored us. We moved ourselves to a different table. I ordered the most expensive entree, the tenderloin. Delicious. We also ordered 2 red wines the moment our entrees arrived. I received my glass of wine when practically my whole meal was done, I had two bites left on my plate. We also barely received a water refill before we got our wine. We ate pretty much our whole dinner without wine or water, how disappointing. The manager even walked by us, asked how our food was with our empty water cups, champagne glasses all lined up at the end of our table, a very obvious sign these needed removing and refilling. We commented the food was great and he walked away. Realizing neither our server or he would help, we quickly got his attention for more water. This still did not come out quickly, a few minutes later he came out with water for a new table and then slowly got ours. And again, my meal was practically gone by this point and we still had no wine to go with my $40 dollar tenderloin. Instead of leaving a great review about the food, which I would had loved to do, I was left feeling very disappointed with the lazy service. If someone orders the 40 dollar 8 oz tenderloin again, you bet they are going to want to enjoy with their wine and hey, a glass of water would help as well, thanks a lot.

M M

I was looking forward to trying the Emporium for dinner…unfortunately, it was not the most memorable evening. The menu is incredibly expensive for how lack luster and unimaginative it is. We started with the $22 charcuterie board that had maybe two pieces of pickled veggies and a couple of slices of meat on a huge wooden block. Then we had the Beef Tenderloin for the main. It was over seared but cooked to the right temperature. However, the sauce was sooooo salty. Just way overdone. Unfortunately, we could not get any service to refill our water the entire evening. We watched what seemed to be a manager LITERALLY fill all the tables around us with water…. And what was hilarious was some of the tables he refilled had half full glasses. I tried to kindly waive to our waitress and she didn’t see me. We had to laugh at ourselves because we couldn’t understand why it seemed like we were invisible. Our waitress was genuinely kind, but she didn’t check in that often, we felt a little abandoned with service for sure. The dessert (cheesecake) you could tell was mass produced days in advanced (maybe even frozen) it was cracked and dehydrated almost hard. The taste wasn’t bad, but again for the price point it’s a no for me. Our bill ended up being 150, which is ridiculous for the experience we had. We had happy hour at a few other restaurants in town and had better service, food and ambiance for a $50 bill than we had here. I don’t recommend.

K Daniel

4.5 stars really . The emporium is a restaurant which is definitely trying to be hip of the lobby of the Elizabeth hotel. MCM vibes and a lot of arugula. We tried the prix fixe menu. The first two dishes were quite good. We enjoyed a goat cheese tart and duck parpadelle. The final course was poached pears with port sorbet. This dish was lacking and really needed some fat like a buttermilk creme anglais or something... Did not care for the port sorbet much at all. Great service and cute restaurant.

Joel McClurg

Very good modern American fare. I tried the shrimp and grits and it was too spicy/heavy so I switched over to the salmon and it was delicious and cooked perfectly. The price point is pretty high considering it's pretty similar to other places in town. Worth a revisit though.