Spencer’s
701 West Baristo Road
Palm Springs, CA 92262
(760) 327-3446

I’m going to keep this one brief. This restaurant is perfect for Palm Springs. The service was impeccable. They fawned at our feet, they brought everything we needed, they checked on us constantly (but not annoyingly) to make sure everything was going well. If only they had that attention to detail in the kitchen.

Like the rest of Palm Springs, everything was a facade. The menu listed the dover sole I ordered coming with “saffron flowers.” No, it came with a saffron sauce, like anywhere else you get saffron in a dish. Nowhere close to justifying the $38 price tag. The halibut was inedibly dry. The menu was ridiculously overpriced, as was the wine list—a markup of over 400% on the Groth Sauvignon Blanc ($11 at Costco, $46 at Spencer’s).

The appetizers were the best part of the meal although now I know that when they say “Do you want your ahi tartare spicy?” they mean SPICY!! It was almost IDENTICAL to the dish I got at Aqua except not as good and much hotter so that my taste buds were hindered (which maybe wasn’t such a bad thing).

I feel bad since I picked the restaurant for the family outing dinner but I have to speak my mind. I chose the restaurant because it wasn’t too quiet for taking our toddler, they had a variety of things on their menu so the whole family had something to choose from, and all that worked out well. But if forced to go to Palm Springs again, I’ll choose another eatery and not one “phoning it in” in the kitchen.