McCormick & Schmick’s Grill

I’m not sure why the reviews on M&S are so low! I’m a fan! And plan to return soon! I came here for the first time on Sunday. My friend suggested this place and he comes here often so I said sure! I’ve eaten at a lot of McCormick & Scmicks locations and had good experiences. This was no different ! It was a hot day but we opted to sit outside and enjoy the patio ! When you have a cool drink and nice shade you barely notice the heat. The bartender was amazing-​so friendly and he even made my friend a custom cocktail-​how could anyone not love that! I believe his name was Bill and he is worth a trip alone! I had Sangria to start, which was cool and refreshing ! And not too sweet. I also enjoyed the chicken and waffles-​I loved them! The chicken wasn’t soggy and the waffle was flavorful and delicious! The Marilyn’s Kiss martini was also really great! It was sweet but balanced and not a weak cocktail at all! I’m planning to return to try the lobster bisque which my friend kept raving about –come here and avoid the crowds at some of the other surrounding restaurants! We stayed for three hours and received exemplary service the entire time.

Kwesi was my waiter and he was very attentuve, knowledgeable of the menu and offered great suggestions. He checked on me several times.
Maryland style crab cake was delicious, packed full of crab. Absolutely delicious.
If you are by the Inner Harbor, you must stop here!

What a disappointment. Reston Town Center has SO many dining options, don’t dine at M&S. We learned (right from the manager) that they have high turnover. Our waitress didn’t know the menu. The restaurant (on a Saturday night) were out of common staples as shrimp for shrimp cocktail. Really? We asked for, and never received bread or butter. The food quality was more TGIF than McCormicks. We ordered NICE wine, and the staff has no idea how to serve wine. She uncorked and just poured away… no sampling to ensure we were satisfied. Very Applebee’s.
We had to clear our own dirty dishes and flag down other staff members to take them away while flagging down other staff members for clean silverware. Overall, huge disappointment.

Well we thought we were in the irish pub. Nope. Be careful-​easy to mistake. Good Guinness. Irish pub is to the right. M&S have the special Guinness tap nozzle so neat to see ripples. Their TVs are bad bad bad. Wonder how many ppl think they r somewhere else.

Went here for a business dinner, party of 6, and there was hardly anyone in the restaurant.
The food is overpriced and well, not good. The steaks were well cooked, but lacked flavor. The appetizers were Applebee’s-caliber.
The service is the real weakness here. Seth, our waiter, couldn’t answer basic questions about the menu. Couldn’t list the ingredients in a salad that a colleague asked about, etc. He forgot drinks and had to be reminded often that he hadn’t brought various items. We all ordered dessert and some time later, he finally came back with about half the items. The rest of the dessert followed about 10 minutes later.
They also push a weird membership service which is completely uncalled for at a restaurant with three dollar signs. Cost a member of the party $ 25 to sign up, which is ridiculous.
There are a lot better options in RTC so please skip this abomination.

I am not a fan of the food here. It’s just not very good. Much better options elsewhere in the town center.

Brunch review.
Food: Good
Service: Meh
Live music: Great
Atmosphere: Depressing :-/​
The menu looked great, while I prefer a buffet for brunch the drink menu was original here and the food descriptions looked like original takes on the classics. I’m all about more options for brunch in the suburbs and this place has a lot of potential. In my opinion, wait staff should be trained more, quality checks done on the food, and then it’d (maybe) be perfect! There were only 4 groups of people including us in the entire restaurant for brunch at 12, so that was kinda sad :-/​but the food did come super fast.
Steak and Scrambled Eggs: Decent, not great, not bad. Just Meh.
Hot cinnamon rolls: only $ 1.00 for 4 of these delicious hot cinnamon rolls– no sticky sauce just like fresh made donuts! Highly recommend– try one without butter first.
Oatmeal Brûlée: this was really tasty. I don’t think it was healthy but I don’t think that’s what they were going for– this dish was a big bowl and really good.
Two sunny side up eggs: this is hard to mess up but one of my eggs came to me broken open already.
Side of toast: this was like jumping hoops here, apparently they don’t «do» toast. But they attempted to fulfill my request for whole wheat toast by serving me rye toasted bread. While this will do the trick the issue was it came BLACK, like burnt black. 1) seriously? And 2) are there no quality checks being done at all before food is presented?
The service was maybe what to expect at M&S grill but we were still a little shocked. Sauce was poured on steak without the inquiry of wether or not we were even interested in the side sauce. Dishes were removed in the most uncouth manner, knives kept falling all over the place, and he laughed and apologized. Butter dishes from the appetizer of (yummy) cinnamon rolls were left sitting on the table for the duration of the meal. While the waiter poured water he didn’t think to look at what he was doing so a giant group of ice cubes spilled over into the cup, causing water to go everywhere. And the waiter served burnt toast. Why would you serve burnt toast?
The lives blues music was really good! But they did stop playing half way through.
I say try it for yourself, you may love the brunch drinks and unique menu! As for us I think we’ll stick with other RTC Brunch spots.

Our server was nice and friendly but our drinks took about half an hour and food another half hour. Got two chicken entrees and and two drinks (red wine and cocktail) for a total of $ 82? My chicken parmesan was greasy but the chicken was dry. For what seemed like microwaved greasy food, $ 82 seem way too expensive. Never again. We could’ve gone to Applebee’s and paid half of what we were charged.
Maybe happy hour and bar menu is more reasonable. But I’ll never eat here. I’ve eaten with a party of 6 at another restaurant at the town center and ordered, including crab cakes and 2 cocktails, and total was less than 80 bucks. I feel like I wasted my money. Very disappointing and I regret coming here.

I brought my Board of Directors here for dinner. The steak was terrible– embarrassing. Service was good, but the food was worse than average. Will not return.

I have heard that MS Grill (as well as the regular restaurant) can be hit or miss food wise. My review will be brief. The service was good, some slow patches, but they were pretty busy the night I was there. We were almost charged an extra glass of wine, but they quickly fixed it once the error was pointed out to them. The fish and chips were good and crispy. The fries may have been a bit over-​salted, but that might be something you would want. The hushpuppies were tasty, with actual corn pieces and not dry and crumbly. I ordered the cajun inspried chicken fettucini alfredo. The chicken was tender, the sauce was creamy, but there wasn’t extra sauce for bread or anything. The flavor had all kinds of heat, but it was bland. I would not order that dish again.
If I was hungry and every other restaurant at the town center had a wait time of 30 mins or more, except here, I would consider having lunch at M&S.

Thank you for a great Veterans Celebration and birthday lunch! Solomon was a fantastic, spirited waiter and made sure we enjoyed everything.

Omg! The owner of M&S Grill at Reston better check out what their paying for. The food was so bad last night that i feel the need to write my first restaurant review on Unilocal.It’s very sad when it doesn’t even matter what the quality of service is when the quality of food is that disappointing.
Okay here we go. I ordered the center cut blackened ribye medium-​rare. It came out 30 percent raw, 30 percent med-​rare, 30 percent med, and 10 percent fat. This tells me the grill is old and needs adjustment. I believe the «Chef» (and I use that term loosely), took a piece of meat and placed it on the grill without seasoning. It had nice grill marks but that’s it. The char from the grill which usually blends well with a nicely seasoned piece of meat, made the flavor non existent and a bit bitter… so sad. What made it worse is the grilled vegetables were unflavored as well. The little flavor that the asperagus had was probably from the previous meat char left on the grill. The accompanying tomatoes were also just placed on the warm section of the grill… with no seasoning.
The appetizers were not impressive at all. However the accompanying sauce on the plate was okay. We ordered the potato tots with supposed crabmeat inside? Maybe there were tiny morsels of crab meat but I couldn’t tell. And also ordered the stuffed mushrooms with seafood. Firstly, I have to presume these were frozen apps placed on a plate and put into the oven. Plate came out piping hot, but the apps warm… which tells me they were frozen. I’m presuming of course. There were 5 small mushrooms for 11 dollars.
My wife had the grilled lamb and she also expressed that it had no flavor and tasted bitter. My Niece ordered the Parm-​encrusted flounder and what a «flounder» it was. All 3 of us used the salt and pepper shakers for our meals. I don’t even remember the last time I had to use a salt and pepper shaker at a restaurant?
So sad. When you spend $ 198 for three people (including tax and tip) one should expect a better meal than the Outback Steakhouse. Oh I’m sorry, my wife just screamed that it was worse than Outback as she likes Outback.
I should have gotten the hint when the inside of the restaurant was empty and folks were just sitting outside. There has to a drastic change at this restaurant if I ever return.
Sorry, I just had to share my experience.

McCormicks used to be a must go for me years ago before started trying many different types of food, it‘s still a good restaurant with good food but it seems like they have been left behind by a lot of places popping up eveyrywhere.
on a postive note I still come here to eat and have Never had a bad experience, speaking on the Reston location the staff is good, the Bar staff is awesome and they have a great happy hour, if you‘re out on a date you may want to be seated away from the bar area due to the noise and people constantly coming in and out.

M&S Grill is in desperate need of a make-​over. From the décor to the menu to the nightclubesque black toilets, this place is as dated as the pay phone located near the restrooms.
A recent business lunch brought me here. I started with a cup of the Maryland Crab Soup ($ 6), which actually had nice flavor and a noticeable portion of crab. My entrée of shrimp scampi ($ 16) was quite the opposite. Chewy pasta and five really overcooked shrimp sitting in a puddle of extremely oily sauce was really not good.
My recommendation is to visit one of the many better options in RTC until M&S Grill makes some updates and improves its food.

I went here this past Saturday night for a company dinner and we rented out the private room. The setup of the private room was great and the open bar was quick with our drinks throughout the evening. However I noticed our food was taking a bit long, I was expecting it to be quicker because we planned this event well in advance.
Menu review:
Lobster Bisque– it was very salty and tasted like some poured lobster favor into it.
Caesar Salad– Someone at my table had to order more dressing because there was not enough. It looked like it was prepped and put in the refrigerator before it needed to be served.
Blackened Tilapia– the peas were not fresh and the Tilapia seemed to be room temperature
Baked Stuffed Shrimp– my co-​worker looked like she was chewing forever to eat one shrimp!
Center Cut Filet Mignon– someone at my table said it was a bit dry but probably the best thing on the menu presented to us (which is not saying much).
Dessert: — cheesecake and apple pie were descent but I’ve had better
However the service was great and they were attentive to us the whole night.
My expectations were a little higher for this place compared to the other restaurants in Reston Town Center. When we plan next year another company party, I will remember this mediocre experience.

Ate here on Christmas. They were busy. We had reservations so they sat us immediately. Our waiter was very attentive. The food, overall was very good. A few items here and there were off. The mac and cheese is really odd and not good. The rib eye steak is awesome, mashed potatoes, Kobe burger were excellent. I would come back to try a few other things.
I feel like this place needs a face lift and a menu rehaul, but good bones.

This is for their Thanksgiving dinner.
This year, we had hoped to have our daughter and her family come for Thanksgiving dinner. However, she had to work on that day — and didn’t find out until last week.
So…this past Monday, I took a look at Open Table to see which restaurants that were nearby were doing Thanksgiving dinner. In Reston Town Center, there were a few — M & S Grill, their sister restaurant, McCormick & Schmick plus Morton’s. Morton’s was telling everybody to have steak for Thanksgiving. We, however, wanted a turkey dinner.
We reserved a table for 5:15 p.m. When we got here, they were already doing a brisk business. The hostess told us that it will get even busier as the evening progresses and most of the business is large parties on this day.
We were given a booth, which was nice as we didn’t feel cramped. Our server was prompt, friendly and efficient. I started out with one of their specialty drinks called «aviation» which consisted of maraschino liquer, vodka and lemon juice. It was okay and to me, mostly tasted lemony. My husband got a mid-​priced glass of Chardonnay which he said was good quality.
We, of course, ordered the Thanksgiving dinner (the whole menu was also available). It cost $ 27.99 per person. If you wanted a piece of pumpkin pie, that would be an extra $ 3.99. We passed on dessert as we knew we would be too full for that.
For the first course, you have a choice of a walnut mixed greens salad or a cup of butternut squash bisque. We both chose the bisque and found it to be enjoyable — simply flavored but tasty. You also each get 1 roll and some whipped butter.
The Thanksgiving dinner consisted of sliced boneless turkey with most slices being white meat. There was a small scoop of stuffing, a small scoop of butternut squash, some mashed potatoes, and a crisply cooked vegetable medley which consisted of green beans, wax beans and carrots. My husband got 2 wax beans while I got none. He ever so kindly gave me one of his LOL! There was also a tiny cup of cranberry sauce. The turkey slices had an adequate amount of gravy which proved to be enough to add to the stuffing and mashed potatoes.
We both enjoyed our meals. The only thing on the plate that was kind of meh was the stuffing as it appeared to be breading with very little added to it. The gravy had good flavor as did the other items.
Before the tip, dinner cost $ 85 + change. If we are unable to have a family dinner at home, then this is a good option, so we would have no problems going back.

Food: Negative stars. Disgusting. Not even fresh. Like sucking a salt shaker.
Service: They forgot about us, or just took extra long to serve us…
Atmosphere: Nice (referring to the outdoor seating)
Overall: 2 only because of the outdoor seating, live music.

I had lunch at M and S Grill in Reston Town Center a few weeks ago and thought it was fine. Nothing extraordinary, but definitely deserving of at least 3 stars. It seems to be an offshoot of the McCormick and Schmick’s located across the street, and their menu items seem almost identical.
I ordered the turkey sandwich and it came on a ciabatta bread with avocado and garlic parmesan aioli. The price was decent (compared to other places in the area) and the sandwich was filling, albeit a little dry and bland. I liked the bread they brought at the beginning, and the accompanying fries were good too. Not my favorite place, but not bad for lunch. And the service was good too.

2.5 Stars. The service was fantastic, but a river ran through my butt shortly after dinner.
My daughter is now 10 months old and that’s how long it’s been since my wife and I have gone out for a nice dinner. Thankfully my in-​laws were here from Germany so we finally got a night out. We ended up at M&S because it was an abnormally pleasant summer evening in Reston and this was the last place with a decent atmosphere that you could find an outdoor table in Reston Town Center. There were actually many tables available and live music going on. The atmosphere and the service was the best part of our experience. They know how to treat their customers well. We noticed the same courtesy and mannerisms in other servers as ours treated us with.
My wife had the pasta which tasted like something I can microwave. I have very little respect for pasta, but even my wife acknowledged it was silly over-​priced for the quality of food she received. Even more silly is that adding smoked tofu to the dish costs the same as adding fish. And when I got the bill I learned that she was charged for chicken and didn’t get any chicken. THE PRICE IS WRONG, BOB!
As for the river that ran through my butt post-​meal, I attribute that to the American Style Kobe Burger. I understand that the word «style» signifies that it is not an authentic Kobe burger, but my burger was just a burger that you’d get at any other restaurant. You’re just paying an extra $ 5 for the American Style pooping adventure.