Primrose

Critic's Review

I was staying at the Park MGM, and unless you're just doing a pastry, Primrose is just about the only game in town. I could have slogged my way over to Tom's Urban, but I decided to take the lazy way out. Primrose is sort of like a full-time brunch restaurant; they don't have an extensive breakfast menu and they close at 2pm.

I got to the restaurant at 7:45am (I was still on my East Coast internal Clock). and there was a 30 minute wait for a table; surprising since many of the tables were empty. The hostess invited me to sit at the bar, which I declined. She took my name and phone number and said they'd text me when my table was ready. It was going to be a while so I headed back to my room; a pretty long haul as I was at the end of a long hallway.

After 15 minutes I made my way back; now and it's a good thing. I got this text right after my table notification:

Due to high volume of reservations we will not be holding tables for more than 10 minutes. Please check back in with the host within 10 minutes of receiving the text message. You will be removed from the list after 10 minutes. Thank you.

It would have been nice if they told me that BEFOREHAND.

I would have preferred sitting in the dining room, but I was seated at a small table in the bar area. It was odd because most of the tables in the bar area were unoccupied, despite the 30 minute wait.

I'd gotten a big coffee from Starbucks but I'd heard the coffee here was good, so I ordered some hot coffee and the eggs benedict.

The coffee is indeed very good. One advantage of sitting in the bar area is that you can see the server station so when you need a refill it's easy to flag down your server.

The tiny round table was fine for just myself, but a couple nearby struggled to get everything on the table. If you're a party of 2 I'd request a real table in the dining room rather than risk getting one of these.

The eggs came out in 10 minutes.

Not a bad haul. The rip-off restaurants don't give you potatoes with Eggs Benedict; it's more of a big meal when they do. And these potatoes were terrific. I asked for some butter, which I had trouble conveying to my server (What, you want more Water???). Dipping them in the Hollandaise also works.

The eggs were properly poached; technically this was prepared just right. The problem was the Hollandaise, which didn't have ANY lemon flavor at all, indicating that it probably wasn't house made. Hollandaise is a lemon butter sauce and it fails without enough lemon. Restaurants often use flour to fake it and make it less prone to "breaking". But it's not what I expect from a $19 dish in a "french" restaurant.

I had another cup of coffee and was waiting for my bill when the dude next to me, who I unsuccessfully tried to engage previously, became very animated; we were both sitting in big arm chairs, but his was much lower than mine. So he started ranting and moving chairs around, claiming that he couldn't reach the table from the armchair. It was pretty amusing.

Conclusion

$31 for breakfast, you make the call on whether you want to pay that much. Frankly, if the hollandaise was better I would have thoroughly enjoyed it; as it is it was certainly enough fuel to keep me going until dinner. If you're staying at this hotel and want a full breakfast it's really you're only choice.