rev:text
| - I was going to give it two stars for the aesthetically pleasing patio, but it turns out there is absolutely no backup plan for outdoor diners when rain starts falling. This means anyone sitting outside simply doesn't have anywhere to go if and when it rains...
The food, bad and overpriced. When those two things combine you're in for a bad ride. It took an hour to get our appetizer of garlic bread. An hour. Garlic bread. This was unfortunately the culinary highlight of the evening.
Before we had gotten halfway through our starter, our meals suddenly showed up. There's a reason people order starters, after all, and it isn't to have to make room on the table for their entrées and to decide which of the two to eat first. If only the name of "starter" included some hint within itself as to when it should be served...
On to the entrées, which were a bison burger, an ostrich burger and wild game chili, we noticed firstly that they were not very hot. Lukewarm, at most. The burger buns had soaked through and broke apart when picked up. The chili was severely lacking in the "wild game" element and we could discern maybe one piece of actual meat in the entire bowl. The ostrich burger, while labelled "lean" by our waitress, was more aptly described as cardboard in terms of moisture and taste. There were no toppings (save for a handful of mushy mushroom slices) to add any sort of flavour to a bland patty, and while I am no expert on game meats and don't know if ostrich is simply tasteless, I would have enjoyed my burger itself having some elements of actual taste. The bison burger was the best of the three dishes but that isn't saying much. Dry meat, had some soggy fried onions and mushrooms on it and a slice of bacon. When even bacon can't redeem a burger's taste, something is wrong.
I have no problem paying over twenty dollars for a burger when that burger offers something that a standard pub burger doesn't. In this restaurant's case, the offered extras were a bottle of ketchup, mustard and relish on the table. Very posh.
Great setting, terrible everything else.
|