The Warehouse Bar & Grill (Old Town Alexandria)

Steak and seafood place in the middle of Old Town, white tablecloth, yadayada (pricy).  The tables are tightly packed.  Mostly steak or seafood fare.  Bottom line:  This place is NOT a destination point...

Caesar salad -- bland bland bland.  Leafy, but no tang or zest. Adding table pepper just made it a black pepper salad...
Baby Spinach, Gorgonzola & Spicy Glazed Pecans salad -- probably the highlight of the night.  Slices of Granny Smith apples made nice sweet and sour contrast, though sweeter apples may have been more appropriate (or have both).

Surf-n-turf -- Medium rare filet top sirloin came out medium well, dry, dry, dry.  Crab cakes were good enough, though likely a Cisco special.
New York Strip -- Medium was medium(-ish).  14 oz. "cab" strip with cracked black peppercorn bordelaise and creamy potatoes ---  More like cracked black peppercorn on a bed of steak and hardened potato dome with negligible creaminess (though, the potatoes were a'ight because of their "potatoyness").

To remember:

• Either the cook doesn't know how to cook steaks or else the server does not want to bother with clarifying if the order was "medium rare" or "medium WELL" like confusing the two is not a problem...
• Everything is in a sauce!
• And the sauce was like thickened drippings (to use an actual culinary term would validate it).  The research chefs at Cisco would be proud.

Cost
$$$ > $50 WITH a free entree...

Cleanliness
Not notable...though, the better half said it best: "It felt like there was 'secret dinge'."

Service
** - Notably sub-par
It is unacceptable at a fine dining restaurant like this one that the server who brings water would not only reach over the food while pouring (heaven forbid he use his other hand to pick up the glass...it's not THAT fancy of a place by any means), he didn't care when his pitcher was millimeters from the food. 

That neither steak were cooked "to order" either goes on the server or the cook, but I give the benefit of the doubt to neither.  Both were sub-par.




Pluses 
Crab cakes were edible enough, but there are much options elsewhere.  The pecan salad was very tasty.

Minuses
Nearly everything else.

Overall value
A bargain at twice the price...  Ugh!

The Carlyle is much more consistent, with better service, spacing and much better steak-n-cakes(TM) (<< I've claimed this!).  Old Ebbitt's crab cakes blow these out of the water.  Grace (Ft. Worth, TX) is on a whole 'nother level in terms of...well...everything.  The Carlyle is much better at the same price point.