June 2010
The Bold Knight (Trans-Canada Highway, Chase River, Nanaimo BC)
The place is so bad it gives bad a bad name.
Having driven by this cherub-bum pink and tricycle-blue cinderblock for years, we finally threw conventional dining wisdom down the garbarator and went for dinner.
Sometime, even when your brain is screaming, "Stop now. You can save yourself. Turn and run!" you still cross the threshold, and, like a portal into a bygone era bad dream, it is suddenly in 1978. Don't look down because that is also the last year the carpeting was changed. The walls are a jousting match of Arthurian knights, complete with crossed swords and shields, hoisted on a backdrop of mottled (is that mould?) textured flock wallpaper.
There were other diners. That, stupidly, gave us hope.
Seated in a booth upholstered in burled Carpathian genuine imitation leather, we looked at each other, and the absurdity of our situation, and started to laugh. Then we looked up. The ceiling is a cosmos of gold flecked mirror and, in his best Austin Powers accent, my Brit friend Ian crooned, "Shag me baby." More laughter.
Then we waited, and waited, and waited. Three tables. Three waitresses, but still we waited. Finally water arrived. After 15 minutes. Then the menus; papyrus from the crypt of a Greek Steakhouse circa 1980.
Shock and awe. First at the items listed (when was the last time you've seen escargot in garlic butter with mozzarella cheese...if ever?), and then the prices. WHAT?!? Five star prices in a dime deli.
Ian the Brave ordered popcorn shrimp and I had oysters Rockefeller. His shrimp, when they finally arrived (cold) were miniscule indentured shrimp incarcerated in handcuffs of cornmeal clay served with Kraft mayo. My oysters, although advertised as Fanny Bay, likely came from a salt water swamp near the BP oil spill in the Gulf. Spongy watery spinach blanketed the meager oysters and to further the injustice, Canadian asiago cheese was mounded on top and then the whole mess was cooked to within an inch of its life, thus creating a trampoline texture to the outer surface.
Then our respective glasses of wine arrived. 30 minutes after ordering them, having reminded our waitress 3 times. It was warm red wine, likely stored beside the stove. Whatever it was supposed to be it wasn't. It was cruel and red. That's as far as we got.
Then the main event. My meal was ribs. Overcooked with about 15 centimeters of coagulating syrupy-sweet ketchup sauce and, this really is the best part, a baked potato wrapped in luminous gold flecked (to match the ceiling no doubt) tin foil.
Ian's Alaska crab has been frozen during the last ice age, defrosted and cooked quickly, thus leaving the extremities warm but the inside ice cold. His steak, he did admit, was okay and cooked medium rare, as ordered. He too was gifted with the gold wrapped baked potato and proffered, via a 5- sectioned serving vessel (did they find it in a garage sale?), sour cream, chives, faux bacon bits and ketchup. Egad! Oh yes, and long-ago steamed broccoli stems - can't forget those.
Nothing of what was ordered was finished. We had to ask for our bill repeatedly and then gave up, went to the front cash, and as much as we wanted to pull a "dine and dash" paid an outrageous amount for tragically unhip nauseating food and service.
It will be a bold night in hell before we'd venture through those doors again. read more