I had two chances to change my mind, and I'm sorry that I didn't.
Spending an afternoon in Hermiston, we wanted to start with lunch. He wanted to eat at El Tapatio, but I said I wanted to try a different type of cuisine. I looked on Yelp for nearby restaurants, and seeing this one, I decided that pizza sounded good.
True, some reviews were good, some were bad, but I wanted to give Ye Olde a chance. And I was sure that we would be happy with the family owned eatery.
Driving into the parking lot at 2pm on a Thursday, my beau said, "This place looks closed down. Sure you want to eat here?"
I encouraged him to drive closer to the door so we could see the hours. Sure enough, they had been open since 11am. We decided to park, making sure to not hit the woman who was sweeping the parking lot. I found myself thinking that it was really nice that the restaurant owners hired someone to sweep their parking lot, who may otherwise not have a job.
As we got out of our truck, the woman was walking in our direction so I looked up, smiled, and said hello. She said hello back. For a couple of different reasons, Beau said in a low tone of voice, "You still sure you want to eat here?" I said yes and we walked in.
It was completely empty inside, with low lighting and a peculiar set up. We found our way past the salad bar to a table, and the woman in the kitchen very briefly looked up at us. As I smiled, she did not return the pleasantry or provide a greeting, and looked down back to whatever she was doing.
I could only find one menu, of which I grabbed so we could both look at it while seated at the table. I then took a closer look at the salad bar to see if I would like to order a trip to the salad bar with my lunch. Unfortunately, the ice berg lettuce was of such poor quality, as evidenced by the only colors in the bowl being white and brown, that I wouldn't have even eaten a salad had it come with my lunch. Once deciding on what we wanted, I went up to the counter by the kitchen to order. The lady said,"Did you finally decide?"
After ordering and paying, I decided to write in a 20% tip. I thought that maybe this young woman was having a very bad day, so that might brighten it a bit. No 'thank you' for the tip when she looked at the receipt, which I found slightly off. I sat down and she brought our soft drink to the table, while we began to peruse our newspapers.
Ten minutes later our appetizer came out: jalapeño poppers. All was fine and good except... They were brought out to us by the woman who was sweeping the parking lot. I had figured she wasn't a food service employee, judging by a number of characteristics of her appearance, and I at once began thinking to myself that I really hoped she washed her hands prior to touching our plate. She asked if we wanted ranch or marinara (it would have been a nice touch if they brought out a little cup of each), and when we said we would like ranch, she returned with a mostly empty, food service-sized, no-label bottle of ranch.
The jalapeño poppers tasted good, no complaints, but then my pizza came out; it was a small cheese pizza. The first thing I noticed was the low quality of cheese used. Picture a slice of cheese pizza: ooey, gooey mozzarella, hugging the sauce and bread, dripping off the sides. This was not that cheese pizza. This pizza not only had about 50% cheddar cheese on it, but the two cheeses were not melty or ooey gooey. The cheese had a solid, smooth look to it. That type of low quality cheese that when it's melted, it's not really melted. When biting into eat, I could only taste crappy cheese and bread. The amount of marinara sauce was barely perceptible.
When my pizza was brought out, I figured his burger was right behind it, as the parking lot lady didn't say, "The burger will be here in just a couple of minutes" or anything of the sort. We waited one minute, two minutes; he told me to go ahead and eat, as his burger should be here soon. One slice, two slices, five minutes, ten minutes, now half the pizza is gone. I stop eating. Fifteen minutes rolls by; no one has said anything about the burger to us.
I go up to the counter, and after about 30 seconds the parking lot lady walks by. I ask for a box for the rest of my pizza, along with money back for the burger. She says, "I'm sorry" and gives me $9 and some change back (we had paid for bacon on the burger), we boxed up the pizza, and then we left.
Driving away, I realized I didn't ask for the money that I tipped back. Dang it!
This was one of the worst restaurant experiences I have had in a long while. read more