Reviewing under this rubric. Three stars (***) meets expectations for a fine dining establishment, four stars (****) exceeds, two stars (**) is below expectations.
Decor and noise: Very nice interior, comfortable seats etc. Quiet enough to hear normal conversations. ***
Bar: Excellent bar with specialty cocktails and wide range of spirits. ****
Menu: Pedestrian menu, presented as "classic steakhouse", heavy on meat and fish, very little creativity, but that's as expected for the genre. ***
Food: Reasonably well-prepared for the most part, truffle fries were rushed out, cold and greasy, without discernible application of truffles, disappointing for the price paid. **
Service: Hasty, indifferent, perfunctory, careless. **
Our meal suffered from very poor timing in the kitchen, or perhaps from the waitress. At any rate, there was a gap of over 40 minutes from the cold, greasy appetizer to the mains. No one cleared the appetizer plates, so when the mains arrived, there was no place to put them. The server had to take plates back and return to clear space to serve. Any kind of service at all required flagging a server, which is not what is expected in a fine dining establishment.
I don't mind paying a high price for an fine meal with good service, but unfortunately, Stark's Steakhouse did not provide either one. The meal overall was stunningly expensive, even allowing for an expensive local market, and the food overall was only just acceptable. Indifferent and downright poor service combined to make the experience comparatively unpleasant. We did not feel that our experience was a good value and will be reluctant to return.
The bar is a bright spot, perhaps coming just for drinks might be better. Your experience may vary, of course. This was not enough to outweigh the other negatives for us, however.
In general, there are several restaurants within a short walk with better food and service which provide a good meal and a good value. We will visit one of those next time.