| rev:text
| - There are...things to discuss about this place. Let's tackle a review, huh? Whaddyasay......
Bliss/ReBar? You are a wizard. And you put my friends under a spell. I say this because you have mesmerized them into thinking that this is the only place downtown to eat or drink. They want to go there. All. The F*cking. Time. All the time. And I can't keep up. I'm not affected by your Jedi mind tricks...or your Hogwart's spells....or your One Ring to Rule Them All....so it leaves me sitting home, having just recieved my umpteenth text from a beloved friend which reads "At REBAR!! Get your ass over here! Hurry!" and just sighing and maybe shedding one tear and deciding not to go. And then spending a night in...reading a good novel. Like Dorothy Zbornak. I just can't go as much as they do.
What did you do to my friends? And why?
Let's get something out in the open....you can't give a restaurant a 5-star review based on cheese nachos. You just can't. Please find the nearest Yelp Exit and use it...because you're taking up modem time.
also.....this place has been open for just over 6 MONTHS. Quit bitching that it was "dead on a weeknight". It's a new restaurant! In a shitty economy! It takes time! Be grateful you have extra $$ to go out to dinner with! BREATHE and give it a chance. They are finding their crowd (outside of my wizard enchanted friends, that is). Don't take it out on the establishment because you got your roots done and there's nobody at the restaurant to notice. That's not the restaurant's problem.
THE FOOD: Gotta tell ya'....while I think their food is 'OK', I'm actually shocked that the gays have made this their new home away from homo. There's a noticeable amount of fried items on the menu, and it seems out of character for the gays to build a hive around a place that serves that kind of food. I think the coconut chicken tenders are nice....but they're nothing without the sauce. The salads are good (have had the Cobb and something else I can't remember the name of) and they were decent, but they weren't mixed: they were piles of 'salad ingredients', so if you're picky, asked the kitchen to pre-toss your salad (HEY now...). Really like the chicken lettuce wraps. They're a nice alternative to chicken fingers. Have also had the macaroni and cheese. Found it very tasteful, but I do agree that it's overpriced and am not sure what the "and more" means, either.
THE SERVICE: I've had some slow experiences, but no 'bad' experiences. I do NOT envy having the burden of staffing a new restaurant. It would be a daunting experience - especially in Phoenix. There is a lot of incredibly mediocre service in Phoenix. It is hard....HARD, folks, to find good restaurant staff here. It's shocking, and I don't know the answer. I think some of the staff at Bliss/ReBar needs to get a little more fire under their ass and quit worrying about looking pretty to everyone, but I wouldn't say anyone is outright bad.
The bartenders DEFINITELY all have different pours. Some drinks come out like water, while others actually taste like they contain more than an eyedropper amount of alcohol. Quit being stingy with your pours!! It's a BAR! It's REBAR, to be more specific! And a large portion of your clientele is GAY. Give them strong drinks! They bear the burdens of an oppressive society! They can't get married legally! Intoxicate them and they will be loyal scouts to your establishment. Do this instead of cheating by using wizard power to trick them. Trust me on this.
THE CROWD: Since this establishment has one heck of a marketing team, they get a lot of exposure. This place has been coined "The NEW Place to be Gay". I'm not sure what that means. Or what the old place was. Or that we had to 'go' someplace to be gay (The Mormons and Baptists just informed me that the 'someplace' is called hell.). Is it like showing up at a party and announcing "HEY EVERYONE! I brought GAY! Anybody up for a few rounds?". I digress...
anyway...
it's unfortunately the Amsterdam crowd. Often. Young twinks with a lot of hair product and darting eyes. But on the other hand, you can usually find local actors in 'post rehearsal' or 'post performance' mode there, so that's kinda nice, I guess. But it is a lot of the same people.... all under the same wizard spell. Petrificus Totallus.
So yeah - it's nice that this place has had it's 3rd or 4th reincarnation and that it's going nicely. This location has been a veritable k-hole of business ventures that crashed and burned. Hopefully it'll last. But is it worth going every night? Nope. Does it really warrant a listing as one of Phoenix Magazine's top restaurants? Hmmmmm....not sure on this one. They will need to raise the bar on their menu items to convince me of that.
So until the evil gay wizards decide to release my friends from their evil spell, I guess I won't be seeing them very often. This makes me sad.
|
![[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)