We used to frequent this place like, 20 years ago when the kids were little. The food was OK, but…read moreit was priced for families. So.
Had a bad meal there about 6 or 7 years ago, and filed it under, "Gone downhill from previous, "OK" status. Probably won't go again."
Fast forward to last weekend. Out, time for dinner, driving by, wife said, "We haven't been there in a while", so I pulled in.
Walked in and waited a minute for the check-in line. I commented to my wife, "I feel like I'm in a Time Machine. Every kid working here looks like a clone of the kids that were here 20 years ago." That's not a bad thing. Just funny.
Got to the front of the check-in line. Young girl behind the counter picked up the phone. Stayed on the phone for 3-4 minutes taking a long takeout order, while avoiding eye contact with me.
Hangs up phone. I'm relieved we can at least get on the list now.
Picks up phone without acknowledging or apologizing. Takes another long phone order.
We wait.
She hangs up, finally makes eye contact and says, "How many?" I hold up two fingers.
She disappears into the hallway behind her and hurriedly walks toward dining area (right). In a few minutes, she walks hurriedly past the opening again, but this time toward the kitchen. She briefly made eye contact but no verbal or non-verbal cues as to what she was doing. In a minute or so she rushes back past that opening toward the dining area again.
I'm guessing that, among other things, the dining rooms are probably full, she's checking on when the kitchen will get orders out. Or something.
We just looked at each other and laughed.
After a minute, another girl appears through that opening, apologizes (I guess she saw what was going on?), grabs two menus and asks us to follow her.
This used to be a place you'd have to wait for 30 minutes or more on a Friday night. Not this night. As we walked past the several dining rooms, one had 0 patrons, one was a third full, one had one table occupied. When we got to the largest dining room with 10-12 four tops and six tops in it, there were four other booths occupied.
A server came pretty quick. We ordered.
My wife ordered the soup as a side. When it came, she tasted it and then asked me to taste it. It was bad, like a very tinny taste. When server reappeared, we told her and asked her to take it as we would not be eating it.
My build your own pasta (fettuccine, Alfredo sauce, grilled chicken, grilled mushrooms) ordered as a 1/2 order, was delivered kind of warm. The "sauce" was the consistency of room temp sour cream - not a flowing sauce. Pasta is always overcooked if you don't do it at home, this was no exception. Tried to mix in the sauce to get it to coat the other ingredients.
Finally just asked for the bill and left.
Didn't even notice til afterward (this is on me) that our server didn't take the soup off.
On the way out we noticed that smell you smell in a restaurant when the grease traps aren't cleaned and sanitized for a while. Just a hint of "rancid" in my nostrils.
Will NOT make the mistake of going back again.