| rev:text
| - I attended Rodney's Oyster House on a Friday evening. At 6PM, the place wasn't that busy, but it soon filled up. The atmosphere is very casual, as the decor is supposed to make you feel like you're in a fishing house or something. The staff is dressed very casually and without uniform, so make sure you don't mistake a patron for a waiter!
The main selling point of ROH is, obviously, the oysters. They have a wide variety of oysters which you can order by the piece, or put several of certain kinds to form a platter of sorts. The servers are knowledgeable about the different kinds of oysters, and have recommendations depending on whether you're a beginner oyster eater or not. The rest of the menu is seafood-centric - no steaks here!
As someone who enjoys seafood, I was expecting big things. Unfortunately, the entire experience was a bit disappointing. To begin, the service was very mediocre. While our waiter did a good job of talking about the oysters and accompany sauces, what he forgot was his primary duty: to wait tables. He would disappear for stretches at a time. One order of oysters was forgotten, left to sit at the pass until he was reminded that we were still waiting for these. Half the ice had melted by the time our platter finally arrived. It was two hours in before we had even ordered any main dishes. Drink orders would arrive only partially filled. He was the jovial sort who would pal around with the table when he did show up, but no amount of joking around is going to make me forget about my empty stomach!
As for the food, the oysters were very good. They tasted of the sea, and the variety means that you can try different ones and compare them to find your favourites. The sauces went along nicely as well, depending on your tolerance to chili sauces. I had some bits of shell in a couple of my oysters, though. I don't know if this is a normal thing or a problem with the shucking, but it's a little less enjoyable to have bits of shell amongst your beautiful oyster.
For an entree, I had a pasta with scallops which, like the service, was disappointing. That thing that struck me was that there was no cohesion: here's some pasta with a tomato sauce, and here are some scallops piled on top. Throwing two things together does not a dish make. Execution wise, both the pasta and scallops were a touch overdone - the pasta a little past al dente, the scallops a little rubbery. It could be that I chose poorly - looking around at the smoked salmon plates and the lobster club sandwiches that my companions ordered, they looked pretty good. But you can only write about what you know, right?
Overall, especially given the price, I'd say it was a disappointing experience. It could have been a bad night - certainly some of the other waiters looked more attentive, and as mentioned, some of the other food looked good. But considering some of the other restaurants in the King West and Queen West areas, there are a lot of other places where you can consistently get a good meal with top notch service for a similar price. Will their oysters be as good? Maybe not, but almost everything else would probably be better.
|
![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)
![[cxml]](/fct/images/cxml_doc.png)
![[csv]](/fct/images/csv_doc.png)
![[text]](/fct/images/ntriples_doc.png)
![[turtle]](/fct/images/n3turtle_doc.png)
![[ld+json]](/fct/images/jsonld_doc.png)
![[rdf+json]](/fct/images/json_doc.png)
![[rdf+xml]](/fct/images/xml_doc.png)
![[atom+xml]](/fct/images/atom_doc.png)
![[html]](/fct/images/html_doc.png)