The hotel is, so far, unexceptional, but hey, it's a place to sleep, and it's basically across the street from where I need to go.
There is a restaurant in the hotel called Todd Gray's Watershed, or something like that, so I headed down to get dinner (not having eaten on the plane, and feeling a bit peckish by now.. about 5PM home zone time). The menu was sort of interesting, a lot of shellfish and seafood, sort of mid Atlantic seaboard styles. So I decided on the "Carolina Style Barbequed Shrimp with creamy white grits, andouille sausage, and green onion butter". The Reuben sandwich also looked good, but, hey, might as well try something new, and the combination of shrimp and andouille looked interesting, if a bit more Louisiana than Carolina. It's just a name, after all. Part of it was they didn't have beer listed on the menu anywhere, and a Reuben needs beer, really. And nobody should eat fresh fish in a restaurant on Monday; fishermen don't work on Sunday, after all.
The wine list wasn't all that exotic, so I went for the Clos du Bois Sauvignon Blanc: safe, by the glass, a basic supermarket white bordeaux I'm sure I've had before. I figured the acidity would work with the buttery grits and sausage.
The whole thing goes downhill from there. The waiter finally shows up. Monday night, maybe 20-30 people in the place, total, at a dozen or so tables, half a dozen waiters. I do the ordering thing, ask for some water.
A while later (a long while), my waiter shows up with a glass of red wine (most likely a Malbec, based on the bill, about which more later). Oops.. Dude, I ordered a white, even pointed to it on the menu, it's in the white column as opposed to the red column. He trundles off. Another long while later, and my glass of wine shows up. It's sort of ok, but not what I've been drinking recently (Santa Barbara county white bordeauxs for the most part). No matter, it's cold, it's wet, it's got some acidity. But still no water. A reminder, and he shows up to fill the glass with water.
No bread or rolls, but maybe that's just not something they do at this place.
The entree shows up a bit later. I asked for some bread or something to go with it, and the waiter disappeared to fetch it (I guess they have bread in some form here). It's hard to actually see it, because it turns out there's no real light near the table, but it is clearly shrimp on top of something creamy and grits-like. Using the cellphone as a flashlight confirms this.
It tastes fairly good. A sort of plain grilled shrimp (I was sort of half expecting a vinegar mustard sort of glaze), and some smoky bits of sausage. The grits were good. The green vegetable material was sort of unidentifiable, but even as just color, it wasn't bad. I thought maybe chard or some mild greens. I'm not sure if that's the green onion butter, but it sure didn't taste like green onions.
My waiter brings a little 2 inch cubical piece of bread that looks kind of like a pretzel (salt on top, dark brown crust) on top, but is basically fluffy dinner roll underneath. No big deal, it's bread, and can be used with the sauce. There's a small dish of clear liquid with it, which I thought might be olive oil or something, but it's pretty clear for that. It's oily, has almost no taste. I'm guessing peanut oil or corn oil or maybe (real) light olive oil, something useful for sauteing, but not really what you want to have on your bread. I guess there's a reason they don't serve bread with the meal.
And it gets weirder. The sausage is cold. They're little chunks: like you took your andouille and sliced it lengthwise into quarters, then chopped it to make sort of cubes. And when I fork up a couple, and chew them, they're distinctly cool. Not refrigerator cold, but cool, and definitely not "fresh out of the saute pan" (which is how *I* would have done it.. zap them into the pan with the shrimp and get some sizzle on it). And as I eat the shrimp I realize, they're not really hot, just warm. Hmm, looks like they have a couple big pots of grits and greens, and a steam table tray of shrimp that have been previously cooked, and a bin of sausage bits. No wonder it didn't take too long to make this dish.. all they had to do was "spoonful of grits, smaller spoon of greens on top, sprinkle sausage chunks, stack shrimp on top, and serve". It could have been so good (and probably was, when Chef Todd did it the first time).
And the bowl is dirty on the outside. At first I just thought it was a sort of rustic texture, but it wasn't even around the bowl, and upon closer inspection (cellphone as flashlight again), yep, food residue on the outside of the bowl. Well, hopefully it's just sloppy plating and not a derelict dish machine operator.
Meanwhile, the waiter never comes by, nobody fills the water glass, etc. I finish and wait. And wait. And wait. Another waiter walking by buses the dishes. Finally my waiter reappears and he has the bill. By this time, I'm ready to do the zero tip thing and put a long written list on the back of the bill. Except.. there's no pen to sign the check with (or to make my ranting list). The waiter comes up with a pen when asked. So I start my listing on the back of the bill, and then turn it over. Whups... the entree price is different than what's written in the menu (less, as it happens), and the kind of wine is wrong (later, on comparing with other wines by the class, the abbreviation matches Malbec), although the same $9/glass price. So I ask for the manager. As does the guy at the table next to me, who has ALSO had appalling service.
The guy comes over and I point out that the prices on the bill don't match the prices on the menu, but beyond that, there's some problems, which I list. He disappears for a while, and comes back with a revised bill with no entree, but still the wrong kind of wine. I was willing to pay for the entree.. it's not the first, nor will it be the last, where I gamble and lose, but the guy insisted. I asked about the variety of wine (an old fraud between bartender and waitstaff, or manager and owner, is to ring up different items than actually sold, especially if the margin is better on some than others. ) Oh well.. I sign the tab for $9.90 (no tip) and resolve never to eat there again. The conference is feeding us, I think.
So here's the list...
- No water offered, but water glasses on table. Had to ask, and it took forever. Glass never refilled, until after bill brought.
- Wrong wine brought, and exorbitantly priced: $9/glass for a $12/bottle supermarket wine? $4-5 seems more reasonable, but hey, it was marked at $9, and I was willing to buy it. I still think it tasted kind of pallid and thin, but I'd have to go buy a bottle and compare to be sure. Maybe that's the Clos du Bois style, but it tasted like some of those almost tasteless $4-5/bottle whites we bought at Cost Plus. Sure didn't match some tasting notes I found online which talk about zesty citrus and crisp acidity. Maybe they brought the wrong white.
- Sausage chunks cool, but not cold, nor hot. I'd be interested if the inspector or chef ever shoved a thermometer in the sausage chunk bin. I'm betting around 50 degrees. It's a partially cured sausage, so the nitrites will kill the bacteria.
- Shrimp warm, but not hot. 140F (the usual holding temperature) is pretty toasty warm. If you touch it, it feels hot. I eat quite a lot medium rare meat which is around 130-135 internal temp, and this shrimp was around that temp (by my calibrated tongue<grin>), and certainly no warmer. It's pretty clear that this shrimp didn't just come off the BBQ grill or saute pan when plated.
- Unclean bowl.
- Bill incorrect in amounts and itemization.
- Remarkably inattentive service, for a $20-25/entree (without salad, etc.) price class place, especially when it was only 1/3 full.
We'll see how it goes. Rarely do I eat at a place in the US where I actually worry about temperature control on the food, but there's just so many other little evidences of inattention that I just wonder. Is this a place where the eponymous Todd built the menu and then left others to run the place and they've sort of drifted into bad habits? Maybe it's because it's Monday night.
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