Proper

Pretty unimpressed by proper which is sad because it is very cute inside and our waitress was very nice. The food was mediocre and took a very long time to come out. Sangria was watered down and too pricey for what it was.

Nice patio. Nice décor. But that’s where it ends. Was excited to try for the first time, however will not be returning. French fries were soggy, sangria was watered down, food was cold and took forever to come out. Their potatoes taste like liquid smoke. Overall, super disappointed.

Located right in the heart of downtown on congress street, Proper is definitely one of the gems of this town. I love the location with lots of pedestrian traffic in the front. We had a large group of people and got the room in the back. We actually ended up having more people in our group than we had initially planned. The staff was very courteous and accommodating to our large group and ended up seating us in two groups.
I tried the house board charcuterie which was wonderful and extremely flavorful. I also had an ipa here, they have a great beer selection.
Overall this is a restaurant with a great location, wonderful décor, friendly staff, and great food. Definitely worth a visit for locals and visitors alike.

Stopped in for apps before a show at the Rialto. Sat at the bar. Had the wings, gnocchi mac, and frites. Wings had a great crispy skin and great flavor! The lemon aioli with the frites was yummy! Bartender service was great!

I enjoyed Proper during a recent trip to Tucson. The food was delicious, the drinks divine and I can’t say enough about Shanna’s wonderful service.
I really enjoyed the Beef Cheeks– the bread underneath the beef was very sweet, which complemented the creamy cheeks. Perhaps it was the onion preserve? My sister thoroughly enjoyed the Fried Tomato Salad– almost like a deconstructed BLT. The Top Knot Chicken wasn’t as artfully presented, but no less satisfying than the other options, according to my brother in law. Check out my full review of this Tucson high-​brow comfort food option.

Eggs are good but hostess not so friendly. Didn’t return a good morning greeting when she came to the table to pour water (with her back turned). Thought perhaps I forgot to take off my dragon head before going out this morning, but just checked and it’s not there. Dropped the top on the floor, then proceeded to put the top back on the water and place it on the table for use. Kind of like when you spill something at your grandmother’s and then move furniture to cover it up. Difference here is that your grandmother saw you do it. The bartender, however, was a good host and server. My server/​bartender is the reason I gave this 4 instead of 3 stars. Also good eggs… gotta love good eggs he also gave me a coffee to go.

Food was okay but served lukewarm to cold. When memebers of my party alerted one of our many servers (we saw our actual waitress twice) of the temperature of the food they seemed to heat the food for 30 seconds in the microwave to bring something only slightly more acceptable. Someone resembling the manager approached our table at one point to kind of apologize only to get defesnive saying, «we’re doing the best we can.» Me thinks your best should be better considering the total of 22 people in the establishment. What’s more, none of our food came out at remotely the same time.
My favorite part of the experience might be the missing poached eggs from a member of my party’s dish AND the cold gravy. What makes this story is that the dish was sent back multiple times because of the quick cool gravy and the missing eggs. Each time the dish came back it was lukewarm, still missing eggs, and a new plate of food. Finally, the dish was sent back with a request that it not come back until the eggs were ready… the eggs came out on the side, not cooked right, and the dish was still lukewarm…

Delicious! Tried the wings, tacos, garlic soup and spinach salad. Had the pineapple basil limeade and the homemade gingerale. Everything was fabulous!

This is one of the best places I have eaten in Tucson. This is well made and put together food and not served out of a can. I ordered the pork cutlets with poached egg and chili and cheddar polenta. It was awesome — juicy pork with light and crispy breading that was really flavorful. We shared a side of toast — served with homemade jam, and butter and honey. Great bread, not sure if it’s made there but if not it was still a good choice. My fiancé had chilaquiles which I thought were nicely put together and it was served in a skillet to keep them nice and warm and keep the totopos partly crispy. We were the only ones there and had no problems with the service. I will eat here again and I can’t wait to try the garlic soup!

I wasn’t super hungry so I opted for the kale salad with chicken. I wasn’t disappointed. The kale had a really good flavor/​seasoning and the chicken was very tender and also seasoned well. The house malbec I ordered was off the charts… maybe it wasn’t the house, but it was delicious. I should have asked what it was, but I was too lazy and tired. Which brings me to my biggest «like» of this place… the service. Our server was amazing and you could say her timing was perfect… not too invasive, yet helpful just enough to be there when you needed it. I wish I would have asked who she was too, LOL. I’d come back here in a heartbeat to try more of the menu.

Had the polenta brunch which was super tasty, but would definitely order some toast with it to sop up the goodness! Boyfriend had the biscuits and gravy — wanted a side of potatoes or something because we like a lot of good! Gravy was an andouille pork gravy, spicy but enjoyable!
Had great cocktails!!! The Last Word was so tasty.

Two stars…*gasp*…I know, this is rarified air for most places I’ve been to while living in Tucson.
So the wife and I went out on Saturday night sans kid to have some adult time. Our first stop was Proper, where we sat in the corner, ordered a few drinks, and tried some of the appetizers.
With respect to the drinks, I take umbrage with the idea that their bar only serves very limited types of whiskey/​vodka/​gin. Something like a Johnny Walker straight up should be a no brainer, but I was informed that they didn’t carry it. I settled on some unremarkably named scotch whiskey that worked, but didn’t remedy the fact that a place with an arguably relaxed yet pretentious feel wouldn’t carry arguably the worlds most well known scotch whiskey.
So now to the food, which was… meh. We started with the Chef’s Board, or whatever the hell they want to call a plate with some random meat, cheese, nuts, berries, and mixed greens. My biggest complaint wasn’t the individual quality of the ingredients, but the fact that none of them really made sense together. It was as if they decided to just let a 7 year old in the back pick which ingredients went on the board based on color. It was strange.
Then came the death nail. I ordered the Lamb sausage with chimichurri and it was breathtakingly bad. Now, this is coming to a guy who can, and would eat chimichurri daily, and kill his own lamb with his bare hands and eat it. There was something simply unpleasant about the flavor of the sausage, and the chimichurri simply wasn’t chimichurri. Just because you throw a green parsley based sauce on a plate, doesn’t make it Churri. It was… well, I still have bad thoughts about it.
In the end, we left, to continue our night and couldn’t, for the life of me, justify going back in any capacity. Granted, the ambiance was straight out of a Crate and Barrel catalog, but the food and general service was just whack.

I like this place, food is good and the atmosphere is nice. I enjoy walking here with my dog and eating outside at the bar with my dog tied up in the corner. The portions here are small but filling. We enjoyed the pasta and the cauliflower risotto.

Spoiler: Food tasted good, but it was served cold and we chose not to finish it. They do serve the wonderful XO coffee (but it was cold also).
My querida and I wanted to try a new spot for breakfast and decided on Proper. Place was deserted when we walked in at 9:30 and we had to ask if they were open. We were the only patrons there.
We ordered the chilaquiles and the breakfast polenta and a side of hash browns to go with our coffee.
Remember, we were the only patrons in the restaurant. Food came out and the chilaquiles were served in a stone cold cast iron pan that sucked all the heat out of the dish. My polenta was like warm at best. We looked at each other after just a couple of bites, traded bites and decided to bail out. The side of hash browns (listed on the menus as home fries) tasted day old and had the temperature of being left in a sunny window.
Waitress came by and was flummoxed when we shared with her that the food tasted ok, but was cold. She asked if she could reheat it… wow! We said no thank you, we will just pay and take off.
Proper has all the makings of a great restaurant, but if it has the cajones to put a $ 5 Toast option on a breakfast menu, EVERYTHING better be delivered hot and perfect.
We were disappointed and sad.

4-​stars for service that was a little slow but otherwise it was very good. We stopped in for appetizers and drinks. We enjoyed the roasted beet salad, very delicious, and 2 tacos off the happy hour menu. The catfish taco was on the salty side but the flavor was good. The beef taco was excellent. We’ll be back another evening.

I wasn’t THAT thrilled to be having dinner at Proper but it wasn’t my turn to pick so I sucked it up. Agreeing with lots of other Unilocalers, there’s not much of a vegetarian menu– most of their dishes are beef/​pork heavy. Just when I was about to order the shrimp dish, our server told me that the portion size for the price is too small. I settled for the risotto dish which was alright. I was hungry so I ate it. I really like the space, especially the half outside bar but I’m not sure I would ever have a full meal here again.

Shoutout to Mark and Elisa for a beautiful evening. I’m a true believer that an experience can be elevated with impeccable customer service. These two embodied it fully! What started off as just drinks and happy hour snacks turned into staying for the
Dinner service. I think living in America, we get disillusioned with gargantuan serving sizes. Proper doesn’t skimp you but they also don’t overwhelm you with a serving size meant to feed a family of four.

We will never come back. We came here with another couple on a Friday night. We had been at a bar that didn’t have food so we were looking forward to having some more drinks and a bite to eat at Proper. My husband and I had never been here before but our friends had and said it was good.
Our waitress was Shanna (at least that is what it said on the receipt, she didn’t introduce herself) but what a B***ch! I don’t know why she had such a crappy attitude towards us but WOW we almost walked out immediately and should have had we known better.
We order our drinks and my husband usually drinks Grey Goose. Shanna tells us that they only have Titos or some other vodka we’ve never heard of before in a snippy tone. Our friend asked about a couple tequilas which she said we only have «Brand A or Brand B» (I don’t recall what types she said) but it was her manner in which she was telling us what they did offer that was off-​putting,
My husband orders the same drink every single time, double vodka in a short glass, splash of cranberry and no lime. His drink arrives in a tall glass, an abundance of cranberry and two limes!
We all are vegan so we planned on getting the almonds, olives and fries to start. Shanna informs us that «we are out of olives» in a snippy tone. The almonds are obviously canned smoked almonds and they put about 20 in a small dish and placed a slice of lime on top. The fries were soggy. We asked for barbeque sauce (they had none) and inquired about the chickpea burger on the lunch menu as there no real vegan options for us on the dinner menu. Again Shanna was short with us and told us in a very snippy manner that we could not order anything off the lunch menu.
We literally made a reservation across the street while we were at Proper as we were so unhappy with every single thing. We drank our drinks, finished the fries and almonds and left so we could have a better server and food. Come on Proper! You have too much competition downtown to have poor service and lackluster choices of food and alcohol.

I have purposely waited to review Proper because I was waiting for something better. But after dining here 4+ times, I feel that 3 stars are appropriate.
Let’s start with the good. I really like their outdoor patio/​bar seating. The beers are tap are all local (which isn’t unique), but their selection are most of my favorites from AZ breweries.
For food, most of the times I have dined they have actually been out of what I wanted to order. And this makes the selection very difficult with a limited menu to begin with. At a recent dinner, I ordered the Mexican Shrimp with polenta and bacon. This was very small for $ 12, with only 3 small shrimp and tiny strips of bacon. This was the 2^nd time I had the polenta, which was better than my 1^st experience. I had the lamb burger for lunch recently, and it didn’t have as much of a flavor punch as you would expect from a lamb burger. Also, I thought it was odd that there were two small patties, rather than «a» burger. I have also had the chacuterrie board, and very much enjoyed the pickles, but nothing else really stood out to me.
I will return to Proper, but likely for a few drinks, rather than dinner.

This is a mini slice of NYC to me, with an amazing price point! Note happy hour is until 6pm and their happy hour menu (see picture) is not fried! Yay! Quality ingredients, excellent portions and beautiful presentation= super!
I ordered the brisket sliders, kale salad and pickled veggies. The sliders had a good amount of pickles and the meat was very tender. Kale salad was good (I put lemon on top).