Z's Oyster Steakhouse - Indianapolis

First let me say I have never written a complaint before. We went here last Easter but at dinner time. It was my daughter’s birthday. We were the only ones in the restaurant. Our waiter spent much of his time watching TV at the bar. Our food was average. Perhaps the regular chef was gone? But the oysters were soggy. The Ceviche was not fresh. One in our party ordered a large salad for his meal. It was not cheap, yet the salad that was brought out was smaller than one that normally accompanies a dinner. I know we should have complained at the time but we did not want to embarass my very reserved daughter, so we called the manager the next day. He gave us his apologies. The bill was $250 will no alcohol consumed. It was the worse dinning experience ever at a restaurant, but hey, he apologized, and mailed us his business card. Had he offered anything perhaps we could have tried it again and had a different opinion. Now it is a $250 mistake and my daughter remembers it as her BAD birthday dinner.

Z's Oyster Bar Steakhouse is my new favorite restaurant. Indianapolis has needed a true Seafood restaurant for a while. The Seafood is as fresh as anything I've had on either coast and the Prime Steak is the best in a city with too many steakhouses. We went on a Friday and enjoyed the half price bottles of wine. Amazing to get that good of a deal on Friday. The servers knew their stuff and were present when we needed but did not intrude. We sat in the lakeside dining room started with the best Oyster on the half shell and a half bottle of sparkling. Then we went to entrées and had the freshest Big Eye Tuna I've had and Prime Filet. The Sineann Resonance Pinot Noir the server, Tim, recommended fit our taste perfectly. The managers truly cared and came by a couple of times to ensure we were having a great time. We ended with a Gran Marnier Souffle and some port. Yummy!

Z’s staff was very attentive and our waitress was very knowledgeable about the menu and can be forgiven for not correctly pronouncing “remoulade”, a distinctly southern US condiment not well known in these parts. We sampled the appetizers by ordering fried oysters, fried calamari, and a crabmeat cocktail. All were quite tasty and the tartar sauce that came with the calamari and oysters was first rate although they are a little stingy with it, using the smallest stainless sauce cup you can buy. The crabmeat cocktail was jumbo lump blue crab meat, a veritable rarity in Indiana, and it was fresh, tasty and well picked. It came with remoulade and/or cocktail sauce, both of which are too strongly flavored for crab in my opinion, but our wives, who had ordered it to share, enjoyed it that way. I do have to say the remoulade was quite tasty on its own and I would love to try it with boiled shrimp. My spouse also ordered the lobster bisque which was one of the items on the specials menu. She really enjoyed it, but I found it to be just so so, with the seafood stock base leaving a slightly fishy after taste. It was thick and rich, but the lobster bits in it seemed less than generous and too finely chopped to suit me. Our friends ordered the scallops at the recommendation of our waitress, and that turned out to be a strong success. Very large, they came in a special plate partitioned to hold each scallop individually. My friend generously shared a couple of his. In addition to being cooked to the perfect degree of doneness, each one was topped with a spicy sauce that complemented the bland flavor I usually equate with scallops. My swordfish was generous in size and nicely spiced with a tasty rub and accompanied by an OK pepper spiced aioli. Even though it was a thick steak, it was slightly overcooked for my taste, but enjoyable none-the-less. My wife had their special seafood soup, which she enjoyed even though it did not measure up to her expectations based on previous experience with cioppino in San Francisco and in our kitchen. I sampled it and found the broth to be weak, needing better spicing (I could not taste the saffron it was supposed to have). Some garlic would have helped a lot. It tasted like it was made using the same base stock that was used for the bisque and also left a fishy after taste. The shellfish in it were generous, but somewhat overcooked. There was also a very generous amount of a white fish in it, but that was way overcooked. Overall, I think it was a worthwhile dinner, with some highs and some not so highs, and it would be worth going back, especially now knowing what to avoid and knowing to ask for fish that is slightly undercooked from their norm. Unfortunately, given the very light crowd there, I have to wonder how long they will survive. I am guessing the economy is a real problem for them, with rather high prices, although I am sure they are justifiable given the high costs of good seafood, especially with transportation being so expensive now. I really hope they can improve and be successful because it is hard to find truly good seafood in Indiana and Z’s is obviously making a strong effort to provide just that. I give them an A for effort but a B- for execution.