Okay, this review is for the restaurant called Prime Kitchen that is located at the Travel Center. The Travel Center itself looks great. The folks who work at both seem like great people. In fact, the nice people who work here are why I am giving this place 2 stars as opposed to one.
Oh. My. Gosh.
The food was AWFUL. I suppose it was our own fault, in a way, expecting something special from a Travel Center Restaurant after getting a recommendation from a local. We'd been traveling all day on Mother's Day, with three small kiddos, and my husband offered the opportunity for us to get out and eat something in a sit-down restaurant even though we had about 3 hours left in our journey. Prime Kitchen was offering a Mother's Day special, they said. Chicken Cordon Bleu, with several sides, salad bar and a serving of strawberry shortcake. We'd arrived at an odd hour: 3:00pm, so the restaurant wasn't all that busy, and I couldn't take a peek at anyone else's plate to see what the food looked like. I was tempted to skip the special and just get order a breakfast, but honestly, the salad bar sounded tempting, as did the idea of splitting a shortcake between my little brood. So, I did it.
Okay, the helpings are definitely generous. And the service was quick. My husband ordered a slice of ham, and my kids had a breakfast meal, and those all looked like what you might expect at a breakfast joint in a travel center. Nothing special, but not bad, you know? They got the order wrong in spots, but it wasn't anything major and we could have asked them to correct it if it was a big enough deal. It wasn't. My plate, though. Imagine a slab of frozen pre-cooked chicken rolled in cheap bread crumbs, and then cooked most of the way through. Then, a gelatinous bright yellow sauce slapped on it, and it was reheated enough to bring to the table, where it proceeded to cool so quickly, that you figure it probably never got heated all the way through the first time. I ate one bite.
The couple behind us had also ordered the special. They sent their plates back to the kitchen asking them to be reheated. When we left, I noticed they still hadn't eat the rest of their chicken, either. I nibbled off my children's bacon, and was relieved I had at least eaten the salad. We waited for the shortcake, hoping it was acceptable. Ugh. The "shortcake" tasted like a slab of that thin super-sweet spongey stuff that can keep indefinitely in a plastic bag because it is so stuffed with preservatives that it will never rot. The strawberries and red syrup which inundated it (again, this was not a small portion, either), tasted like they had been poured from a can. It didn't look anything like the picture advertised, and my kids had a few bites before we stopped them from committing culinary hari-cari.
My husband laughed and said that the sign on the door reading, "Cooks Wanted" should have been a warning for us. I got up and chose my Mother's Day special small pot of flowers and left. We call it our $40.00 flower pot. I saw another erstwhile "Special" victim at the door studying the image of the shortcake and the listing of the Mother's Day Special. I leaned across and tried to warn her: "It's terrible!" I hissed. "The food's TERRIBLE!", but either she didn't hear me, or she thought I was one of those too picky out-of-towners.
Maybe I am. If this food perks the interest of the inhabitants of Ogallala, then all I can say is God Bless 'em. And they can have it. read more