| rev:text
| - Some high highs and low lows.
Bottom line: earnest and trying, quick to make up for mistakes. One of the most important things they get right is cleanliness. After a few visits, the worst I've seen is a few crumbs on my seat before I sit down. That's about as close to perfection you can hope for in the 53704 zip code area where practically every other restaurant is often filthy. At Doolittle's, while watching all staff closely, I see lots of good practices regarding hygiene. Takumi sushi restaurant nearby is probably the cleanest, best, most reliable restaurant for miles and miles.
Back at Doolittle's the menu and food hold a lot of promise, but sometimes fails to deliver. The kitchen needs a lot of help. On my last visit, major fail from the head chef.
The worst offense was sending out a scary excuse for what was supposed to be seared tuna, part of an oddly named dish called, "Asian Pickled Tacos." Who wants a pickled taco? I guess putting pea size nuggets of unseasoned, overcooked tuna on a taco shaped wonton with pickled radish is somehow asian. I have no idea where they're going with that, lol.
The fish I was served should NOT have left the kitchen on a plate; it should have left the kitchen 3 days prior, in the packaging it was delivered in, out to the dumpster. The smell and taste indicate it was far, far past freshness. It looked like it was "seared" in a bowl of water in a microwave for about ten minutes. If you don't have fresh fish available, you can't cook the bejeezus out of it to kill the microbes, you have to take it off the menu. This is why I think the head chef needs to be taken to the woodshed. That product should NOT have been on the inside of the building.
I've been eating sushi for almost 30 years, so I know seafood. I can purchase and prepare seared/rare fish in my home and feel safe feeding it to my 2 year old. The tuna on my plate at Doolittle's would have been passed over by an alley cat. It's a good thing the wonton taco shells and the pickled radish are amazingly delicious.
People rave about the chicken but when my wife ordered it, it was nothing special. Bland, not dry but very average and far from what you'd expect from from rotisserie.
I'm pretty sure my pork loin had pink food coloring painted on to make it more visually appealing. I know the difference between pork that's done medium rare, with a little pink, and pork that's well done so that there is no pink. I was tasting the latter. Still decent, not way overdone, and juicy enough. The pork loin is cut across the grain into little discs. In the middle of the disc, only on the side facing up, is a pink circle. Flip the patty over, and it's all gray no pink. Cut through it, no pink. And every slice the same, with the little spot of pink. Hokey as heck. Nothing that's harmful or affecting the flavor in any way, just hokey as heck.
One of the best menu items is the appetizer, tenderloin skewers. It's one of the things that lives up to the promise of a wood fired grill. It's a generous portion of good quality beef; smoky crust on the outside and medium rare on the inside, just the way you want it. Be ready to add a little salt, but that's fine. The fried onion underneath it is crispy, delicious, not overly oily, I can easily clean the plate.
Regarding food allergies/sensitivities, huge room for improvement. That goes for the restaurant on the whole from the top corporate level down to the servers. There doesn't seem to be any sort of system in place. If there is, host and wait staff haven't been informed about it. It's incumbent upon the guest to ask about each and every minute menu item individually.
Most corporate restaurants have a clearly defined practice to address food allergies; i.e., the server will inform the chef one time and then all responsibility is handed off to the chef; or, the server will be the one responsible for having, getting and giving all the information a guest needs to make an informed decision; in some places, host staff will ask when reserving or seating if there are any food allergy issues, then passes the information along to whomever needs to know.
At Doolittle's, the guest needs to ask about every particular item and might have the server respond "I'm not sure" and walk away. In fairness, most times but not all they will check and inform you. But sadly, yes, sometimes you have to look them in the eye and say, "Can you please find out?"
Once I told them of a specific ingredient I needed to avoid, and asked specifically about menu item "A"; then later, with a different dish, the offending ingredient was served to me in menu item "B", which I did not specifically ask about, but I had informed them about my allergy when I asked about "A". It's as if you need to ask about every single thing that's on the menu, one by one. Cumbersome.
The minority ethnicity bussing staff is busy, dilligent. Cute, young, white girl hostesses may be busy chatting or playing with her smartphone. Par.
|
![[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)