Rick and I live in an area known for tourists. Spring and Summer = Fishing and golfing; Fall = Hunting; Winter = Snowmobiling. People come from the four directions to get away from the hubbub of city life. Roughing it a little with some camping or staying at one of the many resorts or their vacation home.
And when they come here, they also need a good place to eat. You can’t drive around these parts without having at least 4 options for dining establishments in a 1/2 mile radius.
We have our favorites that we frequent, but we also like to try out new places, which is what we did during our little outing on Saturday afternoon.
But here’s the deal: either it will end up on the “favorites” list or the “hell no, we will never stop there again” list. Unfortunately, the place we stopped at ended up on the latter.
You’d think that a restaurant that says “Family Dining” on the big sign on the roof would be a shoe-in. The parking lot had quite a few cars in it, so that was a good sign. And they advertised a Saturday Prime Rib special. That was the kicker to check it out.
Of course, what “family” restaurant wouldn’t be complete without the ever popular bar/pool room that is the first area you have to walk through in order to get to the restaurant part. Maybe that’s just a Wisconsin thing.
No biggie… we’re used to it by now.
Next clue should have been the that table we sat at hadn’t been wiped down from the previous occupants. Again, not a huge problem and the “hostess” took care of this rather quickly. (I wonder if my subtle hint of brushing crumbs off the table had anything to do with it.)
The last little insight to our dining experience came in the form of our waitress.
If I hadn’t known better, I would have guessed that she took lessons from Vera. People, she had the attention span of a gnat. I can’t begin to tell you all the things she did that would have made someone of more refined tastes running straight for the door.
OK, I’ll tell you.
First, she brings Rick a glass of ice for his pop that has a HUGE crack in it. When he points this out, she examines the glass as though he is lying to her. When she replaces the glass, she asks him if he would like her to dump the coke from the cracked glass into the new one.
Sure lady, lets just add the tiny shards of glass that could be in the pop to the new glass and pretend that it never happened, m’kay?
Next, we were supposed to get salads with our dinner. When I told her I would pass on mine, she assumed that Rick didn’t want one either. She even made the comment that we made this order easy since she had to make up a lot of them because they had suddenly become swamped. I looked around and saw maybe a dozen people in the tiny room, and 1/2 of them already had their food!
Not a complete deal breaker, but certainly a failure at Waitress 101.
It didn’t take overly long to get our food, but forgetting part of the order really takes brains especially when you have it written down on the ticket. Oh, that’s right, she was swamped.
At the coup de grace? Asking her for a To Go container for the rest of my meal and having her completely forget about it. COMPLETELY as in we waiting a few minutes and decided that it was not going to materialize. When we passed her as we were heading for the door she wished us a good evening.
The best part of the meal? The piping hot roll that was served with the meal was melt-in-your-mouth delicious. I wish I could say the same for the prime rib. Not the best we have had, and I would have told her so if she had taken time to ask us how our meal was. Right, right, she was swamped. Silly me.
I was so unimpressed with this place that I couldn’t even tell you the name of it if I wanted to. Upon exiting it was completely erased from my mind in hopes that I will not speak its name to others.
Now I have done the waitress shtick before, so I feel more than capable of giving a review of this gals’ performance. And in my mind, she gets booed right off the stage.
It’s a good thing that I don’t do restaurant reviews.
*Courtesy of http://www.tvacres.com/restaurants_mels.htm
6 Responses to “It’s Hit or Miss in the Dining World”
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Sorry the service was so bad, but it made for some interesting reading, Mom! Oh, and LOVE your titles for your “lists.” Look a little familiar to me…. 😉 haha
Ah yes, I guess I have seen that somewhere before 😉
Uffda… yeah, definite failure of Waitress 101 there Mom. Sorry for the bad service, but I agree with Chris, some entertaining reading!
And I only gave the highlights!
That is hilarious, but only because we live in an area that turns into a resort town. We often joke that will all of the restaurants, it sure would be nice to find a decent place to eat! Oh, and the “walking through the pool room” before getting to the dining area happens in MI, too. 😉
Good to know that you get to share the same kind of restaurants that we do Kirsten!