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| - My friend was in from out of town, so I had picked out Caffino for our dinner. Apparently I should have called ahead before we were there and starving because the restaurant was reserved for a wedding. I'm not overly familiar with the area, but I didn't think there were many options so we settled on Shoeless Joe's next door. Definitely not either of our preference, but we were hungry. I try to avoid chains whenever possible, I spent enough time on them when I lived in cities without other options.
It was after 7 on a Saturday and the place was empty. We seated ourselves on the patio as instructed, and the waitress came by with menus and tried to sell us on beer before she disappeared inside. We had plenty of time to make our selections before she came out - my friend had the bacon and cheddar grilled chicken sandwich, and I chose the chili and cheddar burger. The food didn't take too long to come out luckily, although when it did I was left staring at my burger. Okay, fine, it's a chili burger, I guess I could have assumed it would be a little messy. I think I had ignored the chili part of the description and just focused on the jalapenos and cheddar. But this was ridiculous. Even if I were to try and pick it up, before I would even get my hands around it they would be covered in chili. It was dripping down all sides of the burger! I went inside and snagged a knife and fork, and that made it edible. It was okay. I got the feeling my friend felt the same. The fries were very good though, although her request for extra crispy seemed to have been ignored.
The service was really not very good though, and with so few full tables there was no excuse. We waited a long time before she came out and we could ask for our bill. We wanted to get going, so we had our money ready for when she came out with it. For some reason, it took her a good 5-10 minutes to bring our bills - there was one order per person, we didn't even get drinks, so I don't know why splitting the bill would be complicated. And again, it was nearly an empty restaurant with at least three servers. When she did finally return, she put the bills on the table and disappeared again before we could give her our money. At this point we were getting annoyed, so we went inside to find her ourselves so we could finally get out of there.
All in all, it's a chain restaurant, with "meh" food and not-so-great service. I won't be back.
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