My partner and I both work as chefs on the street so we were excited to try out Wendell's. The place is super cute with a nice outdoor space, and the menu seemed awesome. However after two tries we can definitely cross it off our list. The gross and careless attitudes of the kitchen staff show how bad food can end up being when the people cooking it have no passion for the food itself.
On our first visit, my partner, mother and grandmother were seated at a four top across from the entrance of the kitchen (this will become important). My partner and grandmother's food was good. My biscuits and gravy was ok except the gravy was broken and it garnished with wilted, mushy, grey chives. Gross dude, no attention to detail. My mother ordered two pancakes lightly done. I see one of the cooks checking my mother's pancakes, then switches them so the top pancake was now on the bottom. When they were brought out we checked the bottom one and it was burned to hell. So instead of re-firing another one on the fly they just decided to be lazy and hide the burned pancake, thinking we wouldn't notice. So we had it sent back, wait about fifteen minutes and the re-fire is completely raw on the inside. Give me a break. So it was re-fired it again. When one of the cooks came out of the kitchen to get some water they gave us disgusting look, like we were to blame that they can't cook pancakes and their quality standards are piss poor.
On our second visit (we were hoping the first try was just a rough day for them), we had a similar experience. The hollandaise on my Benedict was super aerated and had a weird texture. My guess was that it had broken and they threw it in a blender real quick to try and fix it. My partners eggs were completely raw in the whites. He was basically given a plate of boogers. So we ask to have it re-fired (coincidentally same server as last time), and he reiterates that he would like them over medium. They came back absolutely rage cooked, I don't think over hard accurately described them. Kind of pathetic, they're chefs at a breakfast place and they can't cook breakfast food. Once again, one of the cooks coming back from the bathroom (maybe they recognized us from last time), was mean mugging us. She was also wearing a grossly short crop top in the kitchen at work. Now I am all about body positivity but that was just a flat out health code violation. I don't want your sweaty belly button hanging over into my food. The kitchen staff here seem like the kind that would rather just always blame the customer for how the food that they cooked turned out.
All in all, the only positive thing about our experience was our server. I wish I got her name so I could give her a shout out. She was so incredibly nice and patient with us.
A note to the cooks: have some damn respect for what you do, have some respect for food. Assume that maybe once in a while you'll be serving other chefs that know what to look for, and exercise some sort of quality standards because when you don't it's an insult to the rest of us in the industry. Unfortunately when people ask us what the food scene is like on Tennyson St, we warn people to stay away from Wendell's. read more