Block House - Basel

We had great food. Both the soups and steaks were great. First day the waiter was extremely helpful.

If you go there you should try one of their steaks. I had the Mrs. Rumpsteak and it was done exactly the way I wanted it. The service was quick and friendly. But it is a bit pricey. If you want to save some money you could go for lunch which is cheaper.

A good choice of steaks which are well cut and well cooked, a very decent house red and friendly and personal service.

Ate here while staying at Stucki hotel. The manager sat us with no reservations on a busy Saturday night. While the prices seem high there are average of the area. The meal was good and the service was friendly. Would recommend others to try.

The day after I ate at the Block House diner, I ate at an award-winning restaurant at a Mercure Hotel in the UK - that served beef steaks from local naturally farm-reared cows. The prices were half of those at the Block House and the service was well above the efficient but not really friendly service at the Block House.We were staying at the Stuecki Hotel which was excellent apart from their association with this restaurant - a point I made known to the hotel staff - and as we were travellinig from Tuscany to the UK and arrived late, our only option was this Block House restaurant.We made an advanced booking for the Block House at the hotel reception and when we arrived at 8 pm at the hotel, we were pretty much ignored by the busy waitresses - and then the manager came hurrrying towards my group and started to focus his eyes and attention towards my wife..... that was a bit weird when I am the one in our group trying to get their attention.I told him of our booking and without saying anything he hurried back towards where he had come (I assumed he was going to check our booking but as he didn't say anthing to me, maybe I thought he was going to go off and finish off another polemical dismissive response on TripAdvisor) - Luckly he returned shortly after and instead of coming up to us and saying something and seating us - he rudely just pointed towards a table for 4 that was empty.Great Start - but I thought the food could be good.Nope. And to make matters worse, this venue which I can only describe as a road side diner (with mistaken intentions of wanting to be taken for a pricey restaurant) was so over-priced that it should really be embarassing for the owners.I CANNOT understand why the prices are at the level they are - the meat quality was NOT great - the service was NOT great - the ambience was of a road-side diner.I ate locally, naturally farmed steak the following day for half the price!I have every eaten amazing cuts of Wagyu, Argentinian, Aberdeen at far less than their prices!If I try to understand the abberant pricing strategy, this is what I can make of it - the Stuecki Hotel used to be apparently part of the Best Western chain of hotels (that are really not great) - since the Stuecki had broken away from Best Western they had made a lot of changes to the hotel to take the hotel standard way up. As a result they were charging fairly high prices - ie a standard room at £140 GBP. I believe that the Block House Diner was copying the hotel strategy and just increasing their prices - after all those who can stay at the hotel should pay the higher food prices. Thats the only reason I can understand for the high food prices.Or maybe its because Switzerland is not really known for cuisine (unlike the excellent cuisine of France or Italy) but rather for choclates and army knives and watches - so maybe the food is more expensive when it pretends to be good???It is my sincere view that this diner should reassess their customer service and make it friendly (they can take lessons from the hotel reception staff who were excellent) - and they should seriously look at the pricing because right now it is embarassingly ridiculous.My reccomendation to Hotel guests is to try and do some searches on TripAdvisor before their stay and then get a taxi to their restaurant of choice.