Reserve

We came here for Restaurant Week, and are super happy that we did so. Reserve may be a hotel restaurant/​bar, but it’s doing something right, as not only are the prices way more reasonable than you’d expect in a hotel (even on the regular, non-​restaurant week menu), but it also doesn’t feel like you’re dining in a hotel. It’s a non-​hotel hotel restaurant, and I’m definitely a fan!
So, to start with, we ordered a bottle of the Santa Margarita Pinot Grigio, which was more than reasonably priced (and probably the cheapest we’ve ever seen it outside of a liquor store). We also had some of the mussels in the Guinness mushroom sauce, which were delicious. They were perfectly cooked, and the bread that we used for dipping was also amazing. Seriously, I usually don’t eat bread, as I consider it unnecessary filler, but the brown bread… good lord. It was soft and flavorful, with whole grains mixed in, and was delicious on it’s own as well as when being used as a vessel to soak up the mussel sauce. Yes, I ate that bread… and I want some more right now!
After the mussels we moved on to the Restaurant Week menu, because why not. To start with, I had the classic Caesar salad, which I enjoyed, and my husband had the deviled eggs, which he loved (and I also enjoyed, as he was kind enough to share). For our mains, he had the grilled skirt steak, and I had the crab stuffed salmon. The salmon was delicious (a bit rich, but so good), and while I liked the bite of the steak that I had (the peppercorn sauce on it was very tasty), I’m glad I went with the salmon. The truffle fries that came with the steak were also great — they had a nice taste of truffle to them, and we enjoyed as many as we could while still saving room for dessert.
Dessert, just like the rest of the meal, was pretty darn excellent. I had the Baileys Crème Brulee, and my husband opted for the cookie skillet. The crème brulee had a nice, but not overpowering, taste of Baileys to it, and a perfect sugar crust on top. My husband enjoyed his cookie skillet (I did not have a taste of that), and it was sizeable enough that he didn’t finish the whole thing. We also had espressos, which were nice but nothing mind-​blowing.
The atmosphere was very nice, staff were friendly, and the Chef, Shaun Brady, was also very much a presence in the dining area — he was greeting diners and chatting with them to see how they enjoyed their food, which was a really nice touch. Even though it was pretty busy while we were there, it wasn’t terribly loud, and service flowed at a nice pace.
We were most certainly big fans of our meal at Reserve, and will definitely be back again.

The food here was great and service was excellent. Staying here over Christmas gave us a good chance to sample the breakfast, lunch and dinner menu. Grilled cheese for the win!
Irish Chef was a winner, and great to see a hotel holding on to someone of his caliber

Delicious food and right in the heart of downtown.

My review is three part.
We had happy hour Friday night before a concert (also staying in hotel). The truffle fries were good. The homemade potato chips with bacon and cheese were really good, crispy and flavorful and the prime beef sliders were fantastic! Probably some of the best I had ever had. They were reasonably priced for happy hour. The décor and ambiance of this bar/​restaurant/​lounge is really nice. Plush couches and pillows, it’s quite elegant but chic and modern. Drinks were good.
Saturday morning we ordered room service for breakfast in bed. What they said would take 30 – 40 min, took only 20. Thank you for exceeding my expectations because I was hungry! My eggs were a little overdone for over medium but it all arrived hot and tasty. The breakfast potatoes were good. The bacon was crisp but not too done. I didn’t get jam or jelly so perhaps I was to ask for it? I wouldn’t think so but missed that for my toast. The fruit was ok, not very cold as I would have liked and suggest they bowl separately from the hot plate for that reason. It was mainly pineapple and cantaloupe with a couple grapes so cannot complain about that.
Fast forward to Sunday morning before checkout, we went back to the restaurant for breakfast/​brunch. It wasn’t very busy, only 5 – 6 other tables yet it appeared to have one waiter. He brought water and coffee then we sat. For quite awhile. When an obvious cook came out and delivered an order to the table next to us, we knew this wasn’t a good sign, plus we hadn’t seen the waiter for a bit. Guessing someone called in and they were understaffed. Regardless, we got up and left, had the valet bring the car, and hit an IHOP on the highway on the way out of town.

Really!!! A restaurant? I don’t know how they won awards for ambience and romance. It is a hotel bar!!! We went for my husband’s bday and we had people cheering for the Royals 10 feet away. Food was mediocre. Never again.

Several foodie friends recommended Reserve and it didn’t disappoint. The ambiance, décor, service and food were all wonderful. Several table visits by Chef Brady and complimentary dessert finished our anniversary in a delightful way! If I HAD to find a critique… almost every menu item had mushrooms and I’m not a fan. The roasted beet salad was amazing!

Great waitstaff. Came here for dinner and went with comfort food — tomato bisque and grilled cheese. The bisque was perfect and the grilled cheese had cheese grilled on the outside! The dressing on the house salad is both sweet & tangy.
Mary Kay was my server and she was attentive but not annoying.
I will be returning.

Really really good! Great service, nice atmosphere, delicious food. Glad we came here for dinner after a day at the convention center.

Can I just live here?
Another outstanding dining experience at Reserve tonight! Mary/​Meggie did a great job with service and the food, as usual was incredibly delicious! Shaun, the extremely talented and personable chef, came out to see us tonight again (which is a very nice gesture), and he had a dessert that was absolutely out of this world tonight. To call it a banana cream pie would be an injustice, but I’ll start there just to give you a frame of reference. There is a legitimate French term for this dessert (or at least the filling) that I can’t remember now, but this dessert had a slightly salty and delicious pie shell filled with fresh bananas (just about pie-​filling like), with a wonderful toffee sauce layer underneath the bananas, and topped with a vanilla bean flavored whipped cream and some coconut shavings. It was OUT OF THIS WORLD. I would go as far as saying it may be the best dessert I’ve ever had in my entire LIFE, it was that good! Not that the rest of the food was not also excellent. The house-​made potato chips are excellent, you can really taste the potato flavor, and made fresh in house. I’m referring to the happy hour potato chips drizzled with a nice cheese sauce, sprinkled with a few jalapeños. I had the burger sliders tonight, really delicious beef flavor. I guess I’d sound spoiled by not mentioning that we HAVE to start with the delicious deviled eggs (truffled, with smoky bacon pieces sticking out of the tops). All of it was just terrific, as it always is. We’re going to stay at the Ambassador Hotel at both the beginning AND the end of our upcoming vacation from KC. Great hotel, great staff, great restaurant, every single staff member is just over the top with the level of service. Can I just live here?

A–
We had our annual Friendsgiving gathering the day after Thanksgiving at the Reserve at the Ambassador Hotel.
Let me just start by saying their service is impeccable. Nobody wanted to for anything. Two servers attended to us and nobody’s water or cocktail ever went empty and our group can put away the booze. Also, there were 18 of us and they moved the entire room around to accommodate our group comfortably.
The food was stellar. I had the Coq a Vin and it was warm and hearty, pan seared and braised in red wine served with mushrooms and herbed potatoes and my wife had a wonderfully baked salmon stuffed with crab and served in a lemon sauce.
Everybody in our party enjoyed their entrée’s. Also, their appetizers are baller: we had the truffle bacon deviled eggs and the baked stuffed mushrooms and hummus with flatbread. All equally delicious.
The environment is swanky as hell. This hotel bar/​lounge is unlike anything else in the city. A true destination– in a hotel!
If you have a group of twenty or a group of one, go to the Reserve, eat and drink well and tell everyone about it. The space is a true gem. I can’t wait to go back and try more menu items and possibly check-​in and spend the night. I’ve heard good things about their brunch.

Love this place. Great food good drink chill vibe. Grilled cheese as good as it gets.

I went there this week for the first time, as part of the
burger week special. So we tried their $ 5 burger, a spin on a mushroom swiss burger. It was really fantastic.
The mushroom flavor really comes through but isn’t overpowering. The Swiss, cream, mushroom and Dijon sauce was absolutely amazing. Sometimes the cream burgers can be too dense, but this was perfect. We had it with the homemade chips, which were really good in my opinion — just add salt. We skipped the upcharge for the fries so we could have dessert.
Our waitress, Nina, recommended the crème brûlée. That was the *best* part of the meal. It was cool (not cold, but chilled, which may not be traditional, but I really liked it), fluffy, with a really good amaretto flavor, and a nice crunchy-​chewy toffee top. The perfect size for two people to split for lunch. I would have eaten two or three of them if I had time.
Other people have raved about the atmosphere, so I’ll just confirm that. Lots of complaints about the service. When we went, it was really busy (because of the aforementioned special), but the service was great. I really enjoyed it and will try it again for dinner soon.

The GREAT staff at the Ambassador (Linda, Paul, and Chef Shawn) — helped my then-​fiancé and I put together an intimate (30-​ish guests) wedding the weekend of October 4, 2014. We took over the restaurant area for the wedding/​reception, and put our out-​of-​towners up in this stellar hotel. The staff did a great job planning for what could be anticipated, and gets major «improv points» for adjusting as our needs evolved and changed. This is particularly impressive, since we lost our original venue THREE WEEKS prior to the wedding. We NEEDED to count on the Ambassador, and they delivered. In every way. Even though we’re «locals» in KC, we’ll be staying and dining there again soon! Thanks again, staff of the Ambassador! You’re our heroes!

Wow, what a pleasant surprise! So fun to spend a Friday night in downtown Kansas City at a special place. My visit to Reserve at the Ambassador Hotel was exemplary! Walking in through the lobby, the hotel itself is timely and beautifully decorated. The hotel went through a big remodel and reopened in 2012. We sat at a table at a cozy booth, which was upholstered in really cool gold-​ish leather, adorned with pillows.
Service was excellent throughout the evening. We ordered a bottle of wine for the table and were served promptly. We had a couple salads for starters, and warm bread was brought out before the meal. I ordered the coq au vin, which was definitely the best coq au vin I’ve ever had. My dad had one of the specials, lamb shank, and said it was the best he’d had in his life (he’s a big fan of lamb).
During our meal, the chef, Shaun Brady, came out and chatted with us for a while. We made the connection that we were both from the same neighborhood in Chicago — we lived 2 blocks away from one another (!) before he moved here a year ago. Coming from the Chicago culinary scene, Shaun has used his expertise and experience to create a perfect dining experience here in Kansas City at Reserve.
For dessert, we ordered the cookie skillet – super delicious fresh baked cookie in a mini skillet, topped with ice cream and drizzled with caramel. The party seated at the table next to us had ordered a round of several desserts. They were very friendly and shared one of their desserts– a type of peach tart, with us. Of course, we finished off both of them, along with fresh brewed coffee. I am so glad to have discovered this spot. I’ll definitely be recommending Reserve to locals and friends visiting from out of town. Looking forward to coming back and checking it out in the soon future!

I hope I just found the Reserve on a bad night, but I am leaving feeling underwhelmed. The menu had me excited for tasty food and cocktails, and walking in to the lobby raised those hopes with dramatic décor and romantic mood lighting. Unfortunately … Both the wait staff and some of the food fell short. While the main course of wild mushroom penne pasta was delicious… The Crème brûlée was cold. While my cocktail was good, I ended up my standby instead of trying something new because our waiter knew very little about wine and cocktails and they were out of several liqueurs listed in their specialty cocktails. Overall– it was ok. When it was good it was great but when it was bad it was quite disappointing. May try another time.

Really liked the overall experience at the The Reserve. We went on a Saturday for lunch and there was hardly anyone there, so no wait! I got the Deviled Eggs (which other people had recommended) and they were very good!
A couple of other people mentioned the slow service and I would have to agree. For us it wasn’t to big of a deal but I could see if we were in a hurry it could have been frustrating.
Loved the interior! Definitely has a lounge type feel. I would definitely go back!

I really, really wanted to like this place. The few times I’ve walked into the hotel, the staff was super nice and super helpful. Like A++ customer service. Which is part of the reason I was excited to try this place, with the other reasons being gorgeous décor and proximity to my living quarters.
I’m sad to say that the customer service in no way reached the restaurant. Not even remotely. We met up with some friends for lunch and were one of two tables with patrons. During lunch, the place started to fill up and was semi-​full. There was one waitress the whole time. I can understand some of the issues due to understaffing but she was completely incompetent from the get-​go when there was almost no one there. Also, once the place was semi-​full, I don’t understand why the manager, who popped out to talk to a couple tables (but not ours) didn’t help out for an hour.
The whole thing was a comedy of errors. Cases in point:
— It was a good half hour between receiving our soup and entrée. 10 – 15 minutes is the time it should take. Especially during lunch for fairly basic sandwiches. Definitely not 30+ minutes. There was no apology or excuse saying something’s wrong in the kitchen or whatever else could have gone wrong. Just us wondering if our food would ever be out.
–When my husband ordered, he specifically asked for no dairy on his dish since he has a dairy allergy. When his meal came, there was parm cheese sprinkled on his fries. What happened next led us to believe it was her mistake rather than the kitchen’s.
–When he asked for fries without cheese, she looked semi-​confused and said, «well, they make it with cheese.» Honestly, it was a bunch of strands sprinkled on and could easily be left off. It was super obvious so I don’t even know why she thought that it couldn’t and even made that comment. She didn’t seem well versed in the menu at all.
— My husband finally got his fries 5 minutes after finishing his meal. 15 – 20 minutes after putting in his request for no cheese.
— But this almost didn’t happen since the waitress never came back to check on us. It took about 20 minutes before she came within view so that he could ask for cheese-​less fries.
— Finally, I never had a refill of water. When the chef (?) came by to refill as we were paying our bill, he refilled two of our friends glasses, went back, brought back another pitcher and proceeded to fill my glass with iced tea. Now I had never ordered iced tea. I happened to love tea so this was fine but our friend who did order the iced tea had his glass filled with water instead. At this point, I literally busted out laughing since everything that could be incompetent was incompetent.
We wandered in at just past 11:30, ordered soups and sandwiches as soon as the waitress came around and didn’t end up wandering out until 1:10. We weren’t lingering at all. That’s completely unacceptable for lunch in a business district. If you’re in a rush and have a limited lunch hourish, this is *not* a place you ever want to eat.
The only good thing is we actually got the correct dishes right off the bat (minus the fries with cheese). Thank goodness because we’d probably still be there for dinner service while we waited for the waitress to come around, then correct it.
The food itself is good but not great. I ordered the blackened chicken and found it to be way too salty for my tastes. Not just a little salty but ridiculously salty. The bread also was way too big for the sandwich and wasn’t quite a good match. The poblano chowder soup was very good. Overall 3 – 3.5 stars for the food.
Still, I don’t think I can bring myself to go back. The «service» we received was some of the worst in the past few years. Which wouldn’t be so bad if they didn’t expect a tip/​it was self-​serve and considering the price point.
This place screams business lunch. Based on the service, it’s not somewhere you should bring someone for a business lunch if you want to actually impress them. The price point is $ 2 – 3 higher than what items would cost elsewhere and that would be ok. The presumption is you’re paying $ 2 extra for the atmosphere, service and food quality. Considering the food quality is barely above average and the service is significantly below average (–8 stars), I think paying the $ 2 overage for the meal is a complete rip off. There are too many better restaurants with far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far better service (did I make my point?) at the same price point and even below for me to want to go back.

I was so excited to review Reserve after I had lunch there two Fridays ago and then I ended up getting that flu that has been endlessly circling the city.
So, now that I can consider food again, I’m ready to review the place.
I really liked walking into the restaurant. It’s beautiful. The creamy ivory leather chairs and all the texture… believe me, the interior designer left their mark in the texture department. The only thing lacking, and this was lunch, were people. I’m a big fan of walking into a bustly restaurant. I always get the feeling that if a place is full… it’s good… not always but often.
Anyway, the food was ‘good’ the service was a little off. That is another downside of a slooowwww restaurant, it’s impossible to train good people.
Anywho, I probably won’t go back but it deserves a chance.
I bet sitting in the low lit bar having a drink is probably divine. If I ever get a chance to do that, I’ll re-​review.

Reserve is aiming to do something that for some reason has up until now truly eluded Kansas City: create a hotel bar that is a destination spot for locals as well as hotel guests. And by George, I think they’ve got it!
First of all, the space itself is dramatic and visually stunning. I love the oversized furniture, especially the white leather pod chairs. It’s definitely trendy, but still tasteful. I don’t think it’s so over the top modern that it’ll turn over more conservative guests. The music is the same, a somewhat chill house music/​international vibe that is modern but pleasant. Actually, i wish they’d push the edginess of the music a touch.
But what’s a hotel bar without food and drink? Reserve has those more than covered. They have a pretty solid list of specialty cocktails, but it’s more important to me that they know how to make a classic drink properly. And let me tell you, they make a killer Manhattan! The wine list seems perfectly fine, though I don’t know enough about wine to really chime in.
When it comes to food, these are the four words you need to know:
1– Truffle
2– Oil
3– Deviled
4– Eggs
It takes a lot to make me diss my Nana, but her deviled eggs are like barf compared to these sweet morsels of deliciousness. They are a must have. Also great are the lobster corn dogs. I haven’t been here for entrees yet, but I trust they’re just as quality as the small plates.
My group of friends and I are all quite excited to have a place like Reserve downtown. It’s a dang classy bar for real life adults with jobs and 401Ks and so forth. If you’re the type of person that likes to go out to Extra Virgin, Manifesto or Gram & Dun, I’m sure you’ll be quite pleased with Reserve.

This restaurant is amazing. I live in L.A. & am from the NYC area so I’ve seen some pretty awesome restaurants in my time but this one ROCKS! The atmospher & design are awesome. The service is wonderful & the food is as good as it gets. Period. Amazing. Delicious. God-​like even. (lol)
FYI — I had the braised beef & it was the tastiest piece of meat i ever had in my mouth…(lol) but seriously… it was amazingly DELICIOUS