| rev:text
| - So poor it bordered on the surreal.
This establishment seems to have a dream scenario: excellent location that serves as its own billboard near a busy intersection, an attractive exterior and a stylish interior that reflects the nautical theme without overt kitsch like diver's helmets, life preservers or taxidermy fish hanging on the walls.
Unfortunately, it was the ultimate case of style over substance as horrid food and worse service had us wondering if we were on hidden camera with the limits of our patience being tested. The lowlights:
-We sat at the bar. The bartop was strewn with cellophane and cracker crumbs from the previous guest(s). The bartender didn't offer to clean it and when we asked politely for same she stared at us as if we had asked her to recite Shakespeare from memory.
-After this initial encounter, the bartender merely wandered off. She didn't offer menus. She didn't ask for a drink order. The bar is round yet both the bartenders managed, somehow, to remain hidden from view for nearly our entire visit. Finally, bartender B came over. She didn't take our drink order, per se, she merely asked 'Did bartender A take your drink order?'
-A quarter of an hour after walking in and seating ourselves, we finally obtained our beverages. Ordering a Guinness was probably always going to end in tears in this place. They served it in a standard beer glass, not a tulip glass. Guinness always requires an initial pour, then a few minutes to settle, some of the head removed, then a final top-off. Our girl at the bar merely served it up about 2/3 full with the foam filling the rest. Clever portion control or mere cluelessness?
-After waiting to a) order drinks and b) obtain menus, we waited another long
spell to order. It's one of life's great mysteries when wait/bar staff express surprise that guests with menus in hand wish to order food.
-We ordered a sandwich and a plate of tacos, respectively, with a dozen oysters as an appetizer. There aren't many universal rules in the restaurant biz but serving the appetizer (i.e. the starter) before the entrée is probably one of them. Nevertheless, in a rare case of 'undesirable kitchen efficiency' my tacos were presented to me in a flash - with still no sign of the appetizer and no mention of it by the bartender. The kitchen and bar staff, bless them, saw fit to cover the entire edge of the plate with visible thumbprints - it looked like a page from an FBI database.
-Eventually the oysters arrived along with the sandwich. The sandwich bun was a scrawny, mass-produced, white-bread specimen that Aldi would be embarrassed to sell. The mahi therein was ice cold. None of the condiments named on the menu were included and, inevitably, the bartender expressed shock not that they were missing but that we had the temerity to ask for them.
-Both bartenders then disappeared into the black hole at the center of the bar. No follow-up on drinks. No check of food quality (perhaps they knew full well it was rubbish and were afraid to ask). Our lengthy spells of downtime did allow us to observe them in their native element. Bartender A kept her beer bottle opener stuck down the back waistband of her sweat pants i.e. tucked snugly against her underwear or, more likely, her bare backside. Handy for her but probably not very hygienic for the unwitting beer drinker placing his mouth where the opener had just been.
-We ate what we could, our appetites dulled by the food's shocking quality and temperature, but still couldn't free ourselves from the gilded prison since the bartenders refused to acknowledge that we hadn't taken a bite in eons, that we had pushed our plates away, and that our glasses stood empty. After another interminable stretch we were finally able to ask for our check.
-When we pointed out as politely as we could that the fish in the sandwich was cold, we got an grudging, insincere 'Sorry' and a shrug of the shoulders. No offer to remove it from the bill. No offer to replace it, even to go.
-As others have pointed out, a nearly empty restaurant on a Saturday at 6 PM should be an ominous, obvious sign to turn away which we ignored to our detriment.
Nobody asked us on the way out to sign a release form so we won't be on reality TV after all as the subjects of an elaborate wind-up. Unfortunately, this means that every sordid relentless detail was intentional or merely the result of apathy.
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