| rev:text
| - My gf and I decided to visit The Wilcox after seeing it's 4 star rating on Yelp and good photos of the dishes, which put it above most other options in the restaurant wasteland in/near Downtown Sauga.
We were both overall impressed with the decor and styling, although the few random "antique" pieces around the walls seemed to have no particular curation to them and seemed to be an afterthought.
After a somewhat awkwardly phrased exchange with the hostess/front desk (about needing to vacate our table in less than 2 hours) we were seated and were impressed with the specialty drink list, and extensive menu choices.
We shared the plain starter Nachos, Shepherd's Pie & Chicken Fettuchini, and unfortunately they went 0/3 on all three.
Nachos... delayed because of a kitchen snafu (no problem, stuff happens) but the replacement set was likely rushed, and wasn't entirely heated before hitting our table (centre cheese layer unmelted with individual shreds) and were covered in an odd tasting tomato sauce (pizza style) which was a strange flavor combination, with nothing special about this dish.
Entree's were also brought while only finished 2/3 of the nachos, speaking to kitchen course-timing issues.
Shepherds pie...mashed potato top was soggy (not crispy), meat filling was soaked/watery and the kitchen likely uses frozen mixed vegetables; carrot, peas, corn? (strange in this dish ) which over-saturates the bottom layer and completely spoils the dish. For $18, one would at least expect fresh vegetables and better preparation, quite disappointing for a Gastropub.
Chicken Fettuchini...first plate, flavour was good but pasta was undercooked (more than just El Dente), we sent this back and the replacement was cooked better, but tasted completely different, over peppered and tasted as though the kitchen may have used different wine in the the preparation (though we aren't sure) but were overall disappointed with the second plate.
Server, was very attentive and the best part of experience here and offered a complementary salad while the pasta was re-cooked and was on-top of beverage refills without any requests.
Overall...disappointing although we were compensated the pasta dish off the bill without prompting, which was a welcome attempt to rectify our experience, but we would likely only return here for drinks in the future, if at all.
|