Austin's Steakhouse in Metairie

went on saturday night as part of a 20 top for a friends birthday

had 8:30 reservations and didn't get sat until well after 9:00...understanable with a party of our size, BUT i'll get back to the problems with this later on

ambiance was okay...the bar area is nice, BUT seems to me it is quite a big bar for the size of the restaurant. 2 flat panel tv's and friendly bar staff.

app- i had the turtle soup (one of only 3 things i could have as an app since iam allergic to shellfish) and it was good. a little heavy on the sherri, but nice consistancy...not too watery. i really wanetd the chicken and sausage gumbo...but they put shrimp in it too. a NO-NO IMO. either do a seafood gumbo or do chicken and sausage, but i wasn't able to taste it and heard it was quite tasty.

my wife got the crabmeat austin. lump crabmeat on lettuce and asparagus drizzled with a dijon remoulaude sauce...she absolutely loved it

salad- i got the caesar and it was okay...i ampartial to strong caesars and this wasn't as strong as i liked, but it was good nonetheless

entree- i got the 8oz filet and it had a very good taste, but we had alot of inconstencies on temps...mine was ordered mid rare and came medium. we had 2 mediums come out well. good taste, but not good on execution. the two sides i got was potatos au gratin (good, but kinda hard to mess up) and satueed spinachand artichoke was a bit soggy

my wife got the grilled ahi tuna cooked rare and i loved it, but she didn't care for it too much. she said it lacked something, but couldn't put ehr finger on it. i thought it was by far the best thing i tasted that night.

service- okay, i know it was late and we had a big party and the service wasn't bad..it just wasn't good. all 20 of us (2 tables) were put on 1 check. we sat seperate, but were billed together which i thought was kinda shitty. then, nobody was asked if we wanted dessert (a big pet peeve of mine). also, we were in 1 dining room and they were vaccuming the otehr dining room while we were still eating. i know they wanted to get out of there, but hell...1 reason we were there so long is because we had to send 2 steaks back. not our fault......also, not our fault we sat almost an hour late.

our bill, including grat came to $1000 for 20 people...a $50 ppa. so it was a good value

anyway, i give it a c+...better than average, but not as good as ruths chris or flemings

for that price in metairie, i'd prefer andreas, impastato's, ruths chris, barrecas, vincents and maybe drago's