Henry's Hi Life

Went to dinner with some friends at Henry's Hi Life, the venerable steak and BBQ house near the Pavillion where the SJ Sharks play. I had heard that the place had gone a bit down hill recently, and yet, I was still looking forward to going. I had been there for lunch many years ago, but had never gone for dinner.

I arrived early and had a beer at the bar. Fat Tire. It was warm and had that odd keg taste. I guess not too many people at this joint, and it is a joint, were into Fat Tire. To bad, it's my favorite beer, currently and I was a bit sad as I felt this was an omen of things to come.

So, the friends show up and we get a get a table fairly quickly. They used to have a chalkboard signup system to get your table, but went to numbers. There is a hostess who controls things and takes your order before sitting down--to speed things up. Not a problem, we order standing in the bar having cocktails. I had switched to Glenlivit, neat.

We sit down and our salads are already at the table. The lady explains which one has which dressing and then quickly leaves. The salads are in those small wooden bowls that we've all seen. Not the type of thing you would expect in a real restaurant, but what you might expect to find in a pizza place. However, Henry's Hi Life has got the "joint" thing going, despite the $29 porterhouse. Fine. Average to poor salad, just lettuce and a few croutons.

The entrees arrive at the table. I had ordered a rare porterhouse. The porterhouse is on the plate with a baked potato. Sour cream in a paper mini-cup and garlic sauce and butter on the potato. It was a potato. My rare porterhouse was not so rare, more like medium except near the bone. This is a big time pet peeve with me. In non-steak restaurants I sometimes order blue rare because I know they don't know what they're doing, so blue rare shows up medium rare which I can live with, but in a steak place I expecting a little bit more. What the fuck, a rare steak shows up medium? I did not send it back because I'm always afraid of what someone will do to my food. So I suffer in silence with my way over cooked steak. Very disappointing.

I'm told the ribs that my friends ordered were okay but not exceptional. The NY strip another friend ordered was also just okay, she said the ribs were a bit better than the ribs. She had grabbed a few from her husband who had the babybacks. I was unable to steal a rib as the two guys with the babybacks were wide bodies and i was afraid to get between them and their kill.

Crapy wine list.

The waiter gave us the wrong check for like $50 less, but when we told him about his mistake he did not give us anything or really even say thank you. It would have killed them to give us some free desert after we saved them fifty bucks?

Henry's Hi Life. Skip it unless you're local and want to be able to say "I've been there". Instead, go to San Pedro Square and find a better steakhouse.