Restaurant Review: Simms Steakhouse in Lakewood, Colorado

I don't know how many years we went to Simms Landing for Thanksgiving dinner, but it was many. Neither of us has any other family here in the state to be with on holidays, and being there are only the two of us, we've been reluctant to do all the cooking in recent years.

So for years we were going to the Simms Landing's Thanksgiving buffet dinners. They always had a nice spread in a warm family atmosphere with lots of families of all sizes going there for their Thanksgiving dinners. The place was always so packed, even at 4 PM when we liked to go, that we had to make reservations on November 1st.

But sometime this year, the sign on the place changed to "Simms Steakhouse" instead.

Was this change due to the problems in the economy or just because the old place had been poorly managed?

So I called on November 1st and asked if they were still having the Thanksgiving buffet and they said "yes", so I made reservations, as usual for 4 PM.

We got there at 4 PM and one of the lights on the covered ramp going into the place, was rapidly dripping water from snow melt above, onto everyone who walked under it, not a good starting sign for what was formerly a good restaurant.

Inside, there were only about 1/4 the number of people that were usually there. We usually had to wait about 30 minutes in a crowded lobby, despite reservations, but this time we got right in and were seated.

But they seated us in what appeared to be the lounge area, not the restaurant area, which was odd because we had reservations for dinner at the restaurant.

Neither of us drinks, and here we were a few tables from the bar. One of us ordered tea, the other coffee. The waitress brought my coffee with the cream already in it, way too much cream.

The seats were low down near the ground and made it where we were sitting slightly below the level of the table, not very good for having dinner. The table was almost at chin level. It was also very dark in there and when we brought our food back from the buffet, we could barely see it, to eat it. I'm not just talking about "seeing it", I mean that I was having trouble cutting it and actually seeing what I was picking up off my plate, it was that dark. They had these very small single track lights above, that may have been 15 watts.

A guy near the bar was spinning a bottle in one hand as he walked with it, reminding me of an old west six gun shooter, but it was a full wine bottle. I remember thinking, that would be pretty cool to me, if I was an alcoholic.

The whole place had been remodeled and was not better for it. Instead of the old seafaring theme, it looked like a tacky cheap '70s disco theme with weird streaky colored lines on panels around various parts of the room. But bottles had been built into clear displays all around the walls. The place looked more like a winery than a restaurant. There were TV's all over, with football games on. ( Sorry guys, NOT interested )

The waitresses wore hot pants shorts and called us "dear", another throwback to the disco '70s?

Our impression was that the place had been turned from a nice family seafood restaurant into a sleazy looking sports bar that coincidentally served food too. There were couples and some single people there but not many families, as there had been in the past.

It was so dark that the waitress kept stepping on our feet as she came up to the table, and apologizing. Wait-people don't like to do that, it's not good for tips.

As we tried to eat dinner and talk over the loud football on the TV, it kept bothering me that it was so dark that we couldn't see what we were eating. I looked over at the north end of the place and it looked more well-lit, like a restaurant, but not by much. So I called the waitress and asked if we were sitting in the bar instead of the restaurant. She said "yes", that the restaurant had people with reservations, and so we were seated in the bar.

I explained that we had reservations and had expected to be in the restaurant. She said that she'd talk with her manager and came back and said that the restaurant was all booked up and it would be a long wait to get over there. So I said we'd stay where we were, but we were both getting quickly discouraged by all this.

After about ten more minutes, I went up and asked to talk to the manager. A man came over and I explained that we had reservations for the restaurant for Thanksgiving dinner at the buffet and hadn't expected to be seated at a bar table. I gave him our name and he found it on the list and said that I was right and they could move us over to the restaurant area right away. How amazing, there were now open tables over there.

Well the restaurant wasn't lit much better, but it was somewhat better anyway. We could sort of see what we were eating.

This is a place with a stunning view of downtown in the valley below, how could a restaurant not make it here? We've always enjoyed going at 4 PM on Thanksgiving, and watching as the sun set over the city and the lights came on, while having a nice leisurely Thanksgiving dinner.

So here we were, and the place was reminding us both of an old video game years ago, called "Leisure Suit Larry In The Land Of The Lounge Lizards".

You cant exactly get up and leave on Thanksgiving, of all days, because almost nothing else in the city is open. Even the fast food places tend to close in the afternoon on that day.

The food? It was a pale facsimile of what had been at Simms Landing before, an attempt to re-create the buffet, but with much less variety. The food quality was poor. The mac and cheese dish, for example, tasted like the macaroni had been cooked and not drained of starch, just tossed in a pot and cooked with some cheap cheese. We both got some reflux later and didn't feel so great.

The traditional turkey was ok, but how can you mess that up? There was also sliced roast beef and ham.

They had a variety of little deserts like Simms Landing had offered, but not quite as good, and only about half the variety. It all reminded me vaguely of cafeteria food.

The overall experience? On a scale of 1-10, we used to think of the Thanksgiving buffet at Simms Landing as about a "7". We both agreed that this was about a "3 1/2".

But the price was still the same, $30 a person for the buffet, plus the soft drink beverages we had, plus tax and tip ( the service was also about a 4 on a scale of 1-10 ). All in all, it came to over $70 for a meal which we wished we hadnt had, but should have cost no more than half of that for the quality, service and shabbiness of the new place.

I snapped some natural light photos of the view before we left, knowing sadly that this would likely be the last time we saw it from there. We wont be going back.

In fact I'd be surprised if the place is still open under the same name, ownership and management, by this time next year.