Location: 7.5
44 Prime is located in a cool old building near downtown Starkville, just off University Drive.
Atmosphere: 5.1
When we first entered, it looked like we were going to be in for a treat: Two-story ceilings and a funky mix of industrial shabby-chic and classic steakhouse luxe. The vibe was seriously hurt by schlocky pseudo-soul from the 80’s playing too loudly over the sound system. I don’t need to hear I’m So Excited for the eleven thousandth time in my life as I’m drinking a $20 cocktail and waiting on a $50 steak.
When we walked in, the first thing we noticed was that, as an employee emerged from the kitchen and opened the door to the dining room, a huge cloud of acrid smoke billowed in from behind him, obviously the result of a big fire that had just that moment been extinguished. Ten minutes later as it drifted through the dining room, it set off the smoke alarm just as our server was beginning to take our orders. Some time later, I would see a fireman in full turnout gear walk through the front door and converse with the hostess, who I have to guess told him his services weren’t in fact needed.
As we were led to our table, the first thing I noticed that it was positioned in a high-traffic spot between the lobby, the bar, and the kitchen. The second thing I noticed was that the chairs were a mix of white low-backs and gray high-backs, which gave it the look of something hastily and carelessly put together. This was confirmed by the third thing I noticed, which was that one of the two tables, the one at which I was seated, was extremely wobbly, to the point where it was going to be impossible for two grown men seated opposite each other to make the necessary motions involved in eating salads and sawing steaks, without launching water and wine glasses all over the place.
I brought this up to one of the servers, who called over someone she identified as the “service manager,” but who I had just seen behind the bar fixing drinks for our party. This young man was an excellent bartender, and for the next ten minutes lay on his back under my table with a screwdriver, a flashlight, a small metal charger designed for water pitchers, and a handful of sugar packets, trying desperately to remedy our wonky table. It would be futile — the table was no better after his efforts than it was before them. But I give him credit for trying. He really went above and beyond to try and fix it. He explained that there was no other table to which he could move us, but I couldn’t help but notice that at that moment, and at no point throughout the evening, was the dining room more than about two-thirds full. I shrugged, and I’m sure my displeasure was evident, but I sat down and decided that despite the rough start, I would keep an open mind and give this place every chance it deserved. After all, with a six-ounce filet running $41 and a ribeye $52, surely we were in for a dazzling evening, right?
Well… wrong.
Food: 4.5
We started off with the calamari appetizer, and while a little too much like General Tso’s Chicken, it was better than I expected. But the rest of the food — in fact, the rest of the entire evening — quickly went downhill from there.
The steaks, while a bit pricey, did come with a choice of house or Caesar salad, and one “classic side” dish. Everyone ordered the Caesar, and it was the most disappointing Caesar I’ve had in recent memory. Not exaggerating here: You can get a far better Caesar salad at Outback or Olive Garden. What little dressing was present offered only the faintest hint of the creamy, garlicky goodness of a well-made Caesar, and the only saltiness came from the few croutons the chef deigned to include (one of our party got exactly zero croutons). It was served in a tiny, plain, white bowl that wouldn’t have been out of place in a junior-high cafeteria.
My filet, which I ordered medium-rare, was cooked well into medium and verging on medium-well. Beside it was a microscopic serving of potatoes au gratin, which was a sorry affair consisting of small, gummy, undercooked cubes of red potatoes, which, judging from their distinctive texture, were almost certainly cooked in a microwave. They were covered in thick, bland, stringy cheese that had begin to cool and turn gelatinous. It was served in a tiny stainless-steel cup, which made it impossible to get any of the potatoes out without holding the cup in one hand and a fork in the other. This is not something you want to force diners to do in order to eat a side dish.
I understand that food prices, particularly beef, have gone through the roof over the past couple of years, and that beef entree prices of $40-$60 are increasingly common, but that’s no excuse for overcooking steaks not by a little but by a lot, or skimping on cheap side dishes like salads and potatoes. Any chef employed by a place where the average check per head hovers around $100 should know that putting mediocre food in a fancy thimble doesn’t elevate it in any way that makes it command those kinds of prices.
On a related note, neither should it be open season on wine drinkers. One of our party ordered a glass of Caymus Bonanza. A bottle can be purchased for about $20. 44 Prime charges $15 per glass, which, at five glasses per bottle, amounts to a 375% markup. That’s steep even at a restaurant that gets everything right. It’s scandalous at a place that gets so much wrong as 44 Prime.
Service: 6.5
I should add that we were here for my daughter’s 21st birthday dinner. As we were being seated, I wanted to order her a glass of prosecco, and was relieved to find two on the by-the-glass menu. When I ordered it — just a run-of-the-mill La Marca — our server informed me they were out of it. Then began some rambling story about how they had a bottle of champagne, and while “quite pricey,” it would at least yield five glasses, one for each person at our table, and I should probably order that one. (Later, my companion would remark that, yes, that’s how wine bottles work). This conversation was taking place as I was standing several feet from our table while the fellow trying to fix it was flat on his back underneath it. Taking in the absurdity of it all, I said to our server, “That would be a great thing to comp the table, given the present circumstances, don’t you think?”
She demurred, saying she didn’t think that was possible. I said, “You probably can’t make that decision yourself, but I’ll bet your manager can.” Off she went to “see what she could do.”
At some point much later on in the meal, long after champagne would have been appropriate in the best of circumstances but after even the point where it would have been appropriate to help smooth out the evening’s exceedingly rough edges, she informed me that the restaurant wouldn’t be able to comp us that bottle of bubbly. She then tried to convince me of the virtues of a bottle of the pink prosecco, which I said to go ahead and bring.
But the salads came, then the entrees, and as the evening dragged interminably on, the dessert menu came. Still no prosecco. I excused myself and made my way to the bar, where I asked the hostess to get the manager.
Over the next few minutes, I explained to him what I’ll explain to you: 44 Prime probably won’t see the year 2023. At 8:30 on a Saturday night, it was maybe one-fourth full. It may limp its way to Valentine’s, but only if it succeeds in convincing enough rubes and out-of-towners to give it a shot, because it’s not going to make it on repeat business from diners who have learned their lesson here, and realize they can get far more bang for their buck at the nearest Applebee’s. After that, the doors will likely soon be shut.
In retrospect, for as many failures as they oversaw, the service staff were the best part of the evening. The main bartender went to huge lengths to help salvage our evening, the hostess was pleasant, and our server, bless her heart, tried her best even though she just didn’t seem up to the task. To the extent that she disappointed, all signs pointed to her being poorly trained and hamstrung by incompetent management presiding over a restaurant in rapid decline. More on that later.
Overall: 5.9
As I was telling the manager all that had gone wrong that evening, he kept assuring me that all was well. Whether he knew it or not, he was whistling past the graveyard.
Whenever a restaurant charging these kinds of prices — that is, staking a claim to be able to deliver to a superlative dining experience — fails so thoroughly, it seems like it becomes easier in your post-mortem to recall not just the big disasters (in this case the smoke, the fireman in full gear, the man upside down underneath our table for ten minutes, the prosecco/champagne drama), but to be able to catalogue a litany of minor failures as well. Here are just a few of many of those minor failures:
- I was handed a glass of bourbon on the rocks by bartender #2. Bartender #1 grabbed it before I could take it. He had been using the glass full of ice to chill the bourbon before he strained it into another tumbler with a single large ice cube, which was nice attention to detail. But the lack of training and communication on the part of #2 was a lack of attention to detail.
- When I took the second glass, the bottom of it was hot — not warm, but hot. Again, lack of attention to detail.
- Of the three cocktails handed to us, none included a napkin. Again, lack of attention to detail.
- With our entrees, we ordered the two most expensive wines by the glass on the menu. Our server poured the incorrect one for me, and had to move my glass to my companion’s spot two seats over. When my companion asked her if it was the Caymus, her brain froze. She knew it as “Bonanza.” This is simple unfamiliarity with the wines. I don’t expect a server to know every detail of every label on a wine list with a hundred bottle, but I do expect them to know at least the producer and the wine’s name for the eight or nine wines on the by-the-glass list.
- Our server removed our bread plates and butter knives, then brought more bread. We had to ask for more butter knives. A well-trained server wouldn’t have removed them in the first place, and upon realizing she had removed plates and knives but brought more bread, would have returned with clean plates and knives. Having been asked specifically to bring new knives, she would have realized there were no bread plates, and would have brought them along with the knives. She also removed forks from other places before diners in our party were finished with them, and had to be asked to replace them.
It was clear that our server became flustered early into our service, and only became more flustered as the night wore on and each little disaster stacked up on top of the last one. As one of my companions remarked, not just about our server but about the whole place, it was like they had “forgotten how to restaurant.” These failures point, clearly and resoundingly, to a failure of training, which is a failure of management.
Service in any restaurant is difficult. Service in a restaurant that bills itself as the premiere dining experience in the region — and charges commensurately — is no doubt among the hardest, and of course we never know what kinds of battles a particular server is fighting, whether in their personal life or in the notoriously chaotic and high-stress world of foodservice. So whenever a server makes one or two small mistakes, not letting it go is a sign of boorishness.
But at some point, continued failures amount to a sort of breach-of-contract between restaurant and customer, and that was abundantly the case at 44 Prime on this evening. As a decent human being, one is obligated to extend mercy and understanding for at least some of those little failures that everyone is guilty of, but the point at which one can legitimately be disappointed, frustrated, even angry, at the service one receives when it consists of one failure after another, is inversely proportional to the amount of money one is paying for the experience. I am genuinely sympathetic to a server who’s going through a divorce, or struggling with childcare or eldercare, or battling an addiction, to the point that it hinders their ability to deliver quality service. But in the end, it’s not my problem, and these prices it’s not my problem far earlier than it would be otherwise. I came here under the understanding that I would pay good money for a good experience. Part of good training, part of good management, is making sure servers know how not to make the small mistakes, and when an accumulation of big mistakes has completely ruined an entire party’s evening, and needs to be addressed in ways that include something more than incessant apologies.
Ultimately, this is all on ownership and management. Servers should be trained in fine-dining silverware management. They should be trained in memory and labeling techniques that keep them from pouring the wrong wine. They should be trained to test the stability of tables and chairs before seating diners at them, and if necessary to rectify them long before service time. They should know not to mix and match chairs such that it creates a thrown-together look and feel, and not to create seating positions that cram people up against walls. These things and so many more… they are all up to ownership and management, and on this night, they failed.
Starkville needed 44 Prime to be great. It could have become an institution had it merely been good. Instead, it’s struggling just to rise above mediocrity, and there are too many indications, from management in denial to a clientele that’s neither large nor likely to demand better, that a turnaround of the speed and thoroughness necessary to save it just isn’t in the cards.