Jeffrey’s

Maybe I went in expecting too much. Regardless, I left the entire experience underwhelmed with just about everything. Given the explosion of the restaurant scene in Austin, there is little desire to return to places that are just a bit below average.
Good marks for our server (Bev) who was cheerful, attentive, and knowledgable. She also was training the busser while working her station, so she gets an extra point for coordinating that as well. (Although the busser had several noticeable errors, he was new and trying, so I will not factor that into the score).
The table location was in a side room just around a well traveled corner. More than once I was bumped by the cheese cart. It was too cumbersome to fit between our table and the diners adjacent to us, so poor planning on management’s part. Normally I would ask to move, however the first incident took place after service had started.
As for the aforementioned cheese cart — not sure why it even exists and is touted on the menu, There were only 5 to choose from. Maybe I am spoiled having lived in San Francisco and enjoyed Gary Danko a few too many times. However the selection was sparse and not really attractively presented. We had 3 of the 5 and admittedly they were flavorful. Just not sure why the fanfare for such a large cart with minimal cheeses.
Very well done on the lobster and caviar blinis — easily the standout of the meal. Blinis were warm and light. Lobster was plentiful. Maybe serve an even number, as many diners were couples and the order had 3 pieces (I expected 2, so it was a pleasant surprise to have an additional treat).
Lamb chop was decent size and cooked to the correct m-​r temperature. Looked a little barren on the plate, but that often happens.
The shellfish risotto was not at all of the quality that I had expected from a restaurant of this caliber. Again, maybe I am a bit jaded from Michael Mina and Eric Ripert’s offerings. The menu claims «wood roasted lobster, king crab, bay scallop & gulf
prawns with butternut squash, lemon & uni butter». Fine. Well, perhaps not so fine. The temperature of the plate caused the butter to separate and pool on one side. And the main shellfish ingredient present? clams. 4 medium sized ones capping off the dish. There were exactly 2 bites of lobster (in the shell still), 2 tasty grilled prawns, and a dozen decently cooked, pea-​sized scallop pieces The one thin crab tentacle was impossible to pull any meat out of. Overall the risotto was cooked to a nice consistency but tasted overwhelmingly of lemon and parsley, negating any creaminess that one would expect.
The chocolate intemperance cake was nicely presented and had a lovely, rich flavor. Paired well with the white chocolate ice cream.
The room itself is cozy with Hill Country décor. The linens (Frette) were in good shape. The tableware, however, was old and dinged up. Plates were generic white and very heavy — reminded me of a cafeteria.
Do I need to go back? Maybe for a martini at the bar. The staff there was engaging and timely. Otherwise, not so much
To end on a nice note, again let me offer kudos to Bev for doing her job and that of the busser. She has a good eye for service.

Their steaks are superb. Worth trying dry-​aged one though it is more pricey. Also a wide selection of wine and other spirits. You will find a perfect wine for any occasion there unless it goes out of stock.

We dined at Jeffreys last evening for the first time and it was one of the top 3 meals we can ever remember. Absolutely everything was perfect from start to finish, they «get it».
Out server was Mcvay and he is exactly what you want at this level of dining. Professional, knowledgeable, and witty without being intrusive.
We started with a martini and old fashioned from the beverage cart followed by the foie gras with a bottle of sancerre. We then shared a Caesar salad that was perfectly dressed and crispy. We both selected steak for dinner, 12 oz filet and bone-​in dry aged new York strip. The strip arrived already cut off the bone and sliced which I wasn’t expecting and it was a great presentation. One of the highlights of the entrée was the sauce bearnaise. We are overly critical of bearnaise and are always left disappointed, but Jeffrey’s sauce is on point! We ended with the chocolate soufflé and three selections from the cheese cart to finish with our Cabernet.
Thank you for a great experience and expect to definitely see us back in the near future.

A Wes Anderson dream come to life! The New Year’s Day Brunch was one of the best meals of my life and just as lovely as the midcentury country club aesthetic of the restaurant itself. My favorite restaurant in Austin!

This is one of Austin’s nicest restaurants. You walk in and you get this «proper» dinner feeling. The hostess takes your coat and gives you a card, the décor is mature, and everyone is wearing either a suit or dress. The menu is actually not as expensive as you would expect for 4 dollar sign restaurant until you get to the steaks. Those are all around $ 50 to, I kid you not, $ 155. I don’t like to order steak at restaurants because I never seem to like them THAT much so it’s not worth it in my book. I’ve had the $ 100+ steaks before but after several tries I never felt that any piece of beef was as fine as its price tag.
I was really impressed by the bread basket they bring you, it has several types and they’re all really good! Decided to opt out for a salad like my vegetarian gf and was blown away by the warm spinach salad. BEST salad I’ve ever had. The fried oysters were a toss up, some tasted great, but some tasted old and had a bad smell to them. No problem though, bought another drink, got hammered and finished the rest of the bad oysters.
Drinks! Singapoire Sling was delicious. I then asked the waiter what his favorite cockatil was and he said it was something not on the menu so I took a gamble and got it… not that good, wish I just got another Sling.
This 4 star review was brought to you by a salad, AKA this salad is FIREEEEE

Went for my boyfriends birthday and we were both surprised how beautiful this place was; food and ambiance. Steak was exception, service was better than one can except and the drinks were perfectly made. Great atmosphere. Will definitely be going back again.

Seating is too compressed. I hate it when you are at a two person table about 6″ from the next table. How can you have a nice dinner and good conversation when your sitting 6″ inches from another table. Other customers were also uncomfortable and asked to be reseated.
I ordered my steak medium. It could have passed for the steak tartar, it was very rare (cool center). How could a fine dining resturant miss the steak cooking order that much?
Sorry, it’s good, but it’s just not that good. I’ve eaten at a lot of good restaurants and this is not one of them.

Five stars for their Happy Hour! You can reserve a table for happy hour in the bar. Half priced dinner options and discount drinks. The free nuts and cute caramels at the end were the perfect addition to make it a wonderful experience. The burger was great. The soufflé was bland, though. Half off bottles of wine on Mondays made happy hour even more luxurious! The décor is earthly and perfect for a rainy day.

I lived in New York for 5 years and had some of the best meals of my life. I have to say that Jeffrey’s is right up there with many of the finest. Our evening here was great. The service is good, especially when silverware is changed between courses and your crumbs are scraped off the linen. We had the Hamachi carpaccio and truffled deviled eggs as appetizers with vodka fitz cocktails. I had the lobster ravioli and my hubby had the lamb chops. Both excellent and unique. The presentation was beautiful, desserts were also beautiful and tasteful. I would highly recommend it for a classy date night, or trying to impress your out of town friends.

Went in this afternoon as a pre-​anniversary celebration with my wife to check out the happy hour menu. We started with king crab & avocado toast, which was light, delicate and quite flavorful. Next for me came the warm spinach, dandelion & arugula. The sherry bacon vinaigrette in this dish is… I don’t have the word for it. Insanely delicious. I also had the burger which wasn’t too big and definitely not too small. Really, really good. Those steak fries are the biggest I’ve ever seen. Couldn’t finish.
Friendly staff and warm ambiance — along with some incredible food — made this a great dining experience. Will be returning.

Best happy hour in town. These guys also make the best old fashion I have ever had.
I highly recommend the burger

I had the burger during the burger challenge and like most of the other restaurants, the burger was an afterthought. I was really looking forward to Jeffrey’s. So much of their menu is red meat and this led me to believe that the burger would be fantastic. It was good, but was also disappointing. The décor here is really cool. I really liked the chairs and glasses. The services was good, but I didn’t much care for the atmosphere created by the other patrons. It was a bit too stuffy feeling.

I had a lovely dining experience as part of a work dinner booked in their private back room, so am not reviewing for the main dining service.
The whole experience was wonderful. Very classy yet comfortable, relaxed pace, made for a fun social experience within a working meal. Jeffrey’s is definitely a well-​to-​do type of joint so I wouldn’t make the mistake of wandering in wearing a t-​shirt and shorts. Complimentary valet parking is a blessing.
The private room in the back is cozy and perfect for 6 people. It can get a little loud if everyone is talking (and the wine is flowing). Rubs shoulders with the wine cellar and makes for a great ambiance. The service was stellar, if not a bit slow. For drinks, appetizers, entrees and dessert the experience ran about 3.5−4 hours.
Food was great though I don’t know if it justifies the VERY high prices. My lamb chops were maybe (MAYBE) 6oz and $ 40+. I don’t mind expensive food as long as it blows me away and I wouldn’t say Jeffrey’s hit that mark.

I tried Jeffreys during their all day happy hour and absolutely loved it!
The aesthetic of the place is great! A traditional take on the american steakhouse without being too stuffy. Love the taxidermy in the bar area and the lighting was so perfect that I felt it was worth mentioning. Kind of a tight fit, if you sit at the bar. I recommend reserving a table in the bar area.
The Escargot was tiny but, delicious. I’d say $ 3 for two perfectly delectable pieces of snail is pretty good however, I wouldn’t pay the full bar menu price. Just feel like I could pay $ 2 more for a whole bunch of tasty snails somewhere else.
The burger is the BEST! Could definitely taste the difference in beef (they use wagyu) and the cheese was just perfect! The fries threw me for a loop as I prefer them a tad bit smaller. I felt like I was taking a bite into a warm potato for some reason. Could be a preference thing but, still a FANTASTIC burger.
Their cocktails were great, leaned on the whimsical side but also maintainted the integrity of the classics. Their Singapore Sling is certainly their signature and the Misadventure (their take on a tiki drink) was a surprise. I’m definitely coming back for those.
My only complaint would be the price. $ 24 is a bit excessive for quite a small burger (I still felt hungry after two appetizers and the burger) and I would’ve loved it if the snails were $ 3 all the time because $ 6 is just too much for two tiny though lovable snails.

The hard knock life of a four dollar symbol restaurant in Austin. This place is pricey, but is it worth the price (and the fact that you’ll feel pretty out of place if you walk in wearing flip flops)?
I’ve now been twice. For a long dinner celebrating a friend and second time for their famed happy hour. Here’s my takeaway:
— I’ve experienced exceptional service both times. You will not experience top-​notch service like this elsewhere in Austin.
— The interior of the restaurant is ethereal. Multiple tones of wood, beautiful lighting, and unique décor make it elegant, but not stuffy. You feel like a million bucks when you walk in.
— Free valet parking is much appreciated. The valet guys’ outfits are flippin’ hilarious. Joke’s on them, it seems. Poor guys.
— Not for the vegetarian, and certainly not for the vegan. The focus here is the best the animal carcass has to offer (both land and sea).
— Wine list seems quite nice. I know nothing about wine, but it’s pages and pages long on fancy paper in this beautiful leather-​bound book. Cocktail menu needs improvement – nothing truly impressive on the list, and for a restaurant of this caliber, there needs to be a few things to write home about. Beer selection … super weak.
— You don’t need to wear a jacket, but you’ll feel like a real jack-​ass if you wear shorts.
— The menu: it’s pretty classic French with a notable Texas twist. Everything is done very nicely – with prices to match – and the portion sizes may leave you wanting more.
— When the boss is buying and says she/​he wants a really good steak, come here. When a vendor wants to take you out to one of «Austin’s best restaurants», consider coming here. I love Jeffrey’s way more when someone else is paying for it. ;-)
Much more specific to Happy Hour:
— Everyone else is right… the food on the happy hour menu is all stand-​out and incredibly delicious, but who would ever pay full price for these items? So while you’re going to love what you eat, you may not feel like you’re getting a «deal» with everything being half off the printed menu price, particularly because of portion sizes.
— You can make reservations for HH!
— A group any larger than four really won’t work — bar space is tight, and if you don’t have a seat, there’s really nowhere to stand. But the seats they have are insanely comfy, plus, and dare I say sexy .
— $ 2 off drinks … meh, they can do better than that.
— Lot has been said about the burger. It’s excellent. Get it.
— Otherwise: pan seared bar steak is delicious, but small. Burrata (seasonal I presume) is absolutely incredible and a must. Cheese plate is tiny and unimpressive with boring with super plain baguette (and a high price that doesn’t match what you get).
— If you’re sharing, they will split everything for you onto two plates.
Make reservations, and for God’s sake, iron your pants.

This review is strictly for the burger since I am doing the MMH Burger Challenge this week.
For my final burger in the burger challenge I had to wait in line for over an hour (which I HATE doing)… but damnit, I invested this much time into this thing so I am going to make it happen.
After a long wait out in the heat, I got a seat at the bar and ordered my $ 28 burger. Damn, that’s expensive! The burger showed up and it was smaller than I expected for the cost, but it did come with a stack of giant french fries which I guess… no, no, that does not justify the extra cost. However, those fries were stupid good. I loved them. The burger itself was very good as well. They cooked it very nicely and they use that fancy Wagyu Beef, which I guess is cool. Honestly, I couldn’t really tell the difference in the beef quality but the burger was real tasty. I hear you can get this burger during happy hour for like $ 12, which I think is a steal. I would happily go to Jeffery’s again during HH to snag this burger for that price. At $ 28 bucks though it’s too damn expensive. I still rate the burger here highly even though it’s expensive, but only because you can go for happy hour at get it for half price. I would also go back just for some fries. Yum.

This may be the worst restaurant in Austin. I’m not kidding. It fails on every conceivable metric.
This was my experience:
Go in around 5:30 on a weekday to try the half-​off burger. Heard it was good. Enter building into a cramped hallway and is told that there is a 45 minute wait for any seating. That’s fine. Waited with the other suckers in the hallway while no less than 5 hosts came and went. Perfumed men with grease in their hair and JC Penny suits handed us menus that we could not order from and then took them away without warning. This happened a few times.
Table is ready. Excited to sit down and order a drink. Table is not ready. The 10 or so hosts had misunderstood each other and given my party bad information. Awkward moment when we are handed menus and have them taken away from us less than a minute later. We see our table. Off in the corner, empty and adult sized. A pair of fashionable females ingloriously sat in one of the small kids tables decides to just snatch it up. Our host informs us that we must now sit in the kids table. There are like 15 tables in this little dump and half of them are barely two feet off the ground. What adult wants to slouch when he eats? No clue.
There were about 30 servers/​busboys/​re-​occurring hosts and every other type of flotsam hovering over us at our miniature table. Some were ruder than others. One particularly perfumed and greased busboy/​runner asked me in very brusque terms to make room on my tiny table for the food. The tables are so small they can hardly hold a drink a plate on them.
The food. Big dumb «steak fries.» 24 dollar burger was pretty small. Dry bread. Pretty good meat. Some mayo and few sprigs of lettuce. Really happy I did not pay full price for it, for I eked into my child’s nest just before happy hour ended. 12 dollars was too much as well. This is a 3 dollar burger at best. And should be served from of a food truck. It was pretty pathetic.
Pro-​Tip: Ask for extra ketchup to dunk the burger in. Gives it flavor and helps with swallowing the dry aged bread.
Main takeaways from my experience with Jeffrey’s:
Fire half your staff. You only have like 15 tables. You don’t need 30 helicopters poking and prodding the eaters. And half of them were rude for no reason. Especially the perfumed and greased men.
I didn’t see any kids in this place, so get rid of the tiny tables. It’s embarrassing to sit in them.
Lower your prices to reflect the mediocrity of your food. Charge 3 dollars for your burger. 1 dollar during happy hour. I saw a steak on the menu that was going for over 100 dollars. I imagine a better price would be 12 dollars. Maybe 8.

I was a regular at the original Jeffrey’s (mainly because I lived directly across the street), and I love the new look they gave the joint. Detail is something they pay a lot of attention to here, down to the plates and even reaching as far as the valet’s uniforms. This attention is not lost on the food, which is perfection. While I do admit the prices are a little intimidating, their happy hour offers half off bar food and slightly discounted drinks on most days from 4:30 — 6:30. (I’m pretty sure it’s Sunday-​Thursday.) We recently came in for wine and burgers, and had a lovely time. It does give the vibe that it’s more so for special occasions or expensive dates, but I still find myself comfortable heading in alone to sit at the bar.

They have a pretty damn good burger here. One of the best in Austin in my opinion. Only problem is it’s $ 24. I have a hard time justifying more than $ 15 for a burger anywhere in the world. Fortunately, you can get their burger here for $ 12 like I have by going during their happy hour (you will need to sit in their bar area to take advantage). Plus, Monday night their bar menu has happy hour all night. Their burger was a bit reminiscent of my favorite burger anywhere which is the one at Father’s Office in LA. Please don’t misunderstand me, this is NOT the Father’s Office burger, but it has that umami combination of sweet, savory, bitter, sour, etc. Their burger includes: mustard frisee, cambozola, caramelized onion, horseradish & caper mayo and comes with steak fries. I’ve been twice now and both times I had a bit of an issue with the steak fries. They are good, but they are so thick, that there is little to no crisp and some of them seem a bit under cooked. This was the case both times. I’d almost rather swap them out for something else which is rare since I prefer my burger to be accompanied by fries. Speaking of rare, the second time I came here the medium rare I asked for on the patty was returned medium. The burger was still good, but I would have much preferred it with some blood. I will probably ask for rare next time.
Their truffled devil eggs are great and one of the very few in town that will be served with an actual black truffle shaving on top. Their crispy fried Gulf oysters are great too and have a nice combination of flavors with the tarragon aioli, grapefruit, habanero & lime
vinaigrette, fresh horseradish, and yucca root chip. The batter on the oysters was tasty too. Other menu items look great too and worth trying in the future.
I’ve had their Artist’s Special Cocktail which included: Weller 107 Bourbon, La Guita Manzanilla, Lemon Juice, and Grenadine. It is shaken and then served up. It was pretty good, but nothing mind blowing or close to it and I’d try something else in the future.
Service I found to be slightly mixed, but over all really good. My first time here my bartender was ok. The second time, I had table service and Molly was great. Their décor is has an old-​school feel with a modern dash. It’s a good setting that fits with their food and drinks. While I do have some issues with the fries, overcooked patty, price of the burger, and the cocktail, there are enough positives to move this from a 3 star to 4 for me. The complimentary coffee chocolate truffle given at the end may have helped too.

Old-​school dining with sophistication!
Jeffrey’s was our first fine dining experience when we moved to Austin in 2000. It was our go to restaurant for celebrations. With all the new restaurant options in the past few years, we somehow forgot about this place.
Last week was our first visit since the remodel in May 2013. I was pleasantly surprised by the updated, but not modern space. The ambiance is more private/​romantic but still kept the old-​school charm. In keeping with the theme, the staff wore white double-​breasted blazers and black trousers. The valet boys look like cabana boys transported from the 80’s country club.
Jeffrey’s knows fine dining. From the moment we walked in, the service was outstanding; we were made to feel very special. Select cocktails can be made table side. The Bullet Rye Manhattan was well-​made, lightly sweetened and allowed the nice herbal character of the rye to stand out. The lobster blinis and cucumber soup was fresh and perfect for the summer. The steak was cooked perfectly rare+, often difficult for many restaurants to do. Overall, everything was presented beautifully and seasoned perfectly.
Leave room for dessert. I had the new old-​school baked Alaskan dessert, which I’m still thinking about.
Yes, it’s expensive, especially the wine list that can set you back a couple of grands; but the food and experience is totally worth every penny.