I want to love Charlie Palmer Steak. The restaurant's absolutely genial namesake chef is responsible for several outstanding restaurants around the country -- among them the Dry Creek Kitchen in Healdsburg, Calif. and Aureole in New York City and Las Vegas. Young executive chef Bryan Voltaggio is a tremendous talent whose kitchen turns out consistently tasty, season-conscious, non-traditional steakhouse fare. The main dining room offers a stunning view of the Capitol. Not only is its all-American wine list among the very best in town, the spot doesn't charge a corkage fee if you bring in an American wine. And Charlie Palmer Steak is one of the few high-end D.C. restaurants that features a Restaurant Week-style promotion year-round with its three-course lunch menu for $20.06.

But I don't love Charlie Palmer Steak. And it's not because the restaurant's dinner menu is priced through the roof. It's because the service is regularly subpar. And the prices that they're charging only magnify the profound service woes. It's a shame too. The food at Charlie Palmer Steak is better than at any steakhouse in town and indeed matches up extremely well against the food at the city's top eateries. But the inept service obscures all that.

So, I'll propose an intervention. Charlie and Bryan, come into this room. You've got so much talent, so much promise. But it's being squandered by your service team. No, don't get up, Charlie and Bryan, don't walk out. Not yet. You have to hear my story. You have to hear how bad it is out there. It is a tale of already-bitten chocolate truffles and ignorant wine stewards. It's the only way you can fix things. We love you. We want to make things better.

Getting seated at Charlie Palmer Steak is a to-do. After you give your name to the hostess, you're taken to your table past a stunning glass wine cellar suspended above a pebble-dappled pool of water. Upon being seated, the hostess places on your lap a cloth napkin that most closely matches the color of your pants or skirt. She brings you your metal-encased menus, which slide into weighted slots on the table. Because you can only see your dining partner if you peek out from above the top of your now hands-free menu, you feel as if you're playing Battleship against your date. The bread steward asks you if you'd like white bread, wheat bread, or olive bread. Another server asks you if you'd like a cocktail. "Perhaps in a minute," you say. "We haven't had a chance to look at the drink list yet." So far, Bryan and Charlie, I might lose the hands-free menu bit, but generally it's all good.

But here's where things start to collapse. Servers, pit bosses, bussers, and wine stewards swarm around a half-empty restaurant. They go to the bar. They talk to one another. They fawn over that table that has just purchased that ridiculously marked-up bottle of 2002 Joseph Phelps cabernet sauvignon. They make eye contact with you and look away. In other words, they don't want to be interrupted from doing nothing. All of which leads to the question: how many people does it take to take your order at Charlie Palmer Steak? The answer is ten -- nine to avoid your table for 25 minutes and one to stop reluctantly after your third "excuse me" and a stare-down.

Even though you recognize full well that the restaurant is making a killing on the dish, you order the addictive yellow fin tuna tartare appetizer ($18) for the two of you. And it is a steakhouse after all, so you opt for the New York strip steak ($36), while your date goes for the filet ($33). Both medium rare, of course. And you'll share the summer squash casserole ($9) and some bearnaise sauce ($2). And yes, you'll have cocktails -- it turns out that, no, there's no drink list, so you order a glass of rosé for yourself and your date goes for a Belvedere martini. The drinks arrive briskly, as does a lukewarm curry-spiked squash soup as an amuse-bouche.

About 10 minutes later, the wine steward finally drops by and sees that you've brought your own wine. It's a bottle of 1997 Van Der Heyden cabernet sauvignon from the Napa Valley's Stags Leap District -- a wine that you've been saving for five years and a small-production wine that even Charlie Palmer Steak doesn't have on its list. He opens the bottle for you, and you offer him a taste to be courteous. He thanks you and looks at the label, remarking that he's never heard of the wine. He pours, but he doesn't return for a taste.

In the meantime, your tuna appetizer arrives -- an Asian-inspired seasoned raw tuna cake with six sesame crackers in a sort of mini-desk file on the side. It's small for a whopping $18, but at least it's done right -- a hint of lime ponzu, a bit of avocado on the bottom, cleansingly bitter baby tat-soi gracing the top. It's gone in a flash.

You start to drink your wine while you wait for the steaks. The wine steward steers well clear of your table, occupying himself with a pair of big-spenders who are clearly slaves to Robert Parker and his points. "Is it because we brought our own wine?" you think. Surely, the restaurant wouldn't trumpet their liberal corkage policy and then look with disdain on those who take advantage of it. You must pour your second glass yourself.

The steaks are here, and they are shimmery and massive -- with wonderful caramelization on the surfaces and pinkness on the insides. The rich, tarragon-flecked bearnaise sauce brightens the natural meat flavors and sets off the charred exterior, as do the five mustards -- lemon, green peppercorn, tarragon, whole-grain Pommery, and "spicy" -- that appear alongside the steaks as if they were oil paints on a palette. The summer squash casserole tastes like eggplant parm at one of those old-school red-sauce Italian places. Bryan and Charlie, you've done it again.

Your cleaned plates sit idle for awhile. With the wine steward yukking it up with the Phelps boys, you pour the last of the wine into your glasses because no one will do it for you. A busser takes the plates away, and you drink the last of your wine. Moments later, the wine steward comes by and relieves you of the empty bottle. On his way back to the kitchen, he sniffs the neck of the bottle and looks again at the label. It's as if he didn't even want to try the out-of-the-ordinary wine you'd offered him. And what kind of wine steward is one who isn't curious in the least?

Having gorged yourself on meat, you politely decline dessert. Minutes later, another server returns with your check and with a delightful assortment of "mignardises" -- the post-dinner Andes mints of the fancy restaurant set. There are raspberry-chocolate truffles, brittle, sugared nuts, and jellies. The truffles are so purely chocolate that your dining partner asks if she might have just one more. The server goes into the kitchen and returns with a small bowl containing two more truffles. This might save the night, you think.

But then your date picks up one of the newly brought truffles and sees an unmistakable bitemark in it. Half of it has been "removed" by a previous diner. When alerted to the existence of this ABC truffle, the server brings it back to the kitchen. He comes back a few moments later and explains that the truffle had been cut by a fork. Yeah, maybe a fork shaped like a tooth.

There's no shame in recycling bread, and there's no shame in recycling mignardises. But there is shame in not acknowledging problems when they pop up. And there's even more shame in lying about them. And service has been a major problem at Charlie Palmer Steak ever since it opened.

Please, Charlie and Bryan, do something about it.

Charlie Palmer Steak
101 Constitution Avenue NW
(202) 547-8100