I spent about 7 hours here, overall I found my experience to be mediocre.
The hostess was exceedingly friendly (and attractive, if that makes any difference!), though the bar staff during lunch hour were not exactly what I'd describe as warm.
For that, we figured we'd sit on the boardwalk and watch the boats go by. This was fantastic and for that, the location is absolutely brilliant.
We ordered a platter for two of wings with bleu cheese and a bucket of Corona (5).
Apparently, or as I was told, this place is famous for its wings and I could hear the waitress recommend it to other patrons.
When the rings arrived, they were awful. They were burnt, practically meatless, and the chicken had obviously been frozen and frozen for a good while. This is bad when it comes to chicken bones, because as the chicken is frozen and frozen for a decent length, the ice crystals break down the bones and make them weak. It does not do this instantly upon freezing, which means that the chicken wings had been frozen for awhile. Yay for fresh food! Freshly unfrozen, that is!
The bleu cheese was absolutely pathetic and in the scabbiest container I've yet seen served with food. Essentially take the screw-on cap of a red sauce container, like from Tesco or Heinz and there you go. That was the amount of bleu cheese for wings in quantity to satisfy two! Worse, there were no bits of bleu cheese or anything in this 'dip'. Rather, it was just watery. It was entirely disappointing.
I was absolutely surprised as to how little meat was on any of the wings and drumsticks. So not only did they clearly use frozen food for their famous wings, but also picked starving chickens clearly destined for an American KFC. That or these were wings clearly derived from the 'runts of the litter.'
It took little effort, as in simply picking up the wing and putting it in your mouth and biting off the tiny portion of meat, to cause the bones to completely shatter leaving your mouth filled with fragments and marrow. Famous indeed.
As we had already pre-paid for dinner, we had no choice but to return. I have a feeling the serving staff assigned to the outside tables are new or not their prime, because it took 20 minutes for the waitress to return when we asked for 5. Then it took another hour between our starter and our main course. Further, requests for a glass of water were never fulfilled, though they were made twice.
For dinner, the starter was their seafood chowder. It was just under 7 Euro and was quite good, though it was served sans oyster crackers. I suppose I wasn't overly surprised, but the chowder would have been better fitted with oyster crackers. It felt a bit weird eating it plain.
My companion had the rack of lamb and I had the 11 oz steak, medium rare.
This was accompanied by a carrot mash, buttery sliced spuds, and steak chips in these cute copper-coloured pots.
The lamb, of which I had a sample, was quite nice. It was tender and had a good flavour.
My steak, unfortunately, was not overly impressive. It wasn't terrible, but it certainly was not worth 26.50. A good portion of the steak was obvious grizzle. It was cooked to medium rare and the bits that weren't excessively fatty were tasty. Unfortunately, a good portion of those 11 oz were grizzle and fat.
My plate also had a dollop of mashed potato, which was good. But it was only a spoonful. Then the carrot mash was equally good, for a vegetable side. The chips themselves were undercooked.
The buttery spuds looked delicious, in fact they looked like au gratin potato, however tasting this led to disappointment as all it amounted too was an over-buttered flavourless mush.
The cosmopolitans were sweet, but definitely light on the pour. That said, they did have a 5 Euro cocktail special and there did seem to be a steady stream of hen parties flooding into this establishment. I certainly would not return to eat, however I would return to sit on the boardwalk and have drinks. read more