Note: This review is solely for lunch.
Today my mother in law noticed an article in the Register Guard about ACE starting up their lunch service. This makes sense as a business idea, since they have a great location downtown, and a full kitchen just sitting unused until dinner time. I've never been for dinner theater before, but I figured lunch might be a great introduction to the theater (btw: no theater entertainment at lunch time, just food).
I really like the layout of the theater. Plenty of tables, and on the upper level, I feel like they're sufficiently far apart to not feel crowded. For lunch you can get a nice high table by the window, albeit of a view that consists mostly of bums and people waiting for the bus. The theater is also a little musty smelling, as theaters often are, which is not great for lunch.
We ordered a curried chicken wrap to share, some lentil soup, and tomato soup. The waitress suggested the chicken wrap wouldn't be spicy, and perhaps I should've been more specific, because my mother in law is VERY sensitive to spicy stuff. And indeed, the wrap came out way too spicy for her, she couldn't eat it. Speaking as someone who's a little more used to eating spicy stuff though, I would say this is about a 1 out of 5 level of spiciness (with 0 being no spice). So I wouldn't worry too much about it, and the wrap is very tasy, I enjoyed it. The chunks could've perhaps been a little larger. I suspect this may be made from canned chicken, which has less texture. Nevertheless I thought it was a great wrap, and I would definitely order it again, and recommend it to others.
The tomato soup was hot and delicious, somewhat chunky in texture, and very flavorful. The bowl size is huge too, a very generous portion. The lentil soup on the other hand was lukewarm at best, and since it was quite salty, we didn't bother to ask them to heat it up.
My mother in law ended up ordering a different sandwich, something with chicken, which she did enjoy. Neither of us cared much for the chips though, they taste like they're oven baked (or like those microwave-chips that are made on a special plastic base that you can find at kitchen stores), very thin yet a little chewy, not crunchy. I kind of wish they'd just served us regular chips from a bag.
They have Diet Dr Pepper, which is pretty awesome, though it was a little bit watered down tasting. I suggest that they up the syrup ratio. The iced tea was great.
Service was excellent, our waitress was very friendly and helpful, and we enjoyed talk to her. The only thing was that we got no napkins, which we had to ask for separately.
Overall, I would probably give ACE a two star rating for lunch, but I'll go for three stars because I feel like they show promise, and are probably working out some minor issues from being new to lunch service. I intend to try them again, perhaps for dinner and a show, and I do think I would try their lunch service again as well. read more
