Rating: C-
We were seated pretty much right away, but the table had not been wiped before we sat down and the host put my menu on top of some syrup. I asked him to wipe the table and he got a towel immediately and wiped the table and my menu.
Our server seamed nice enough, but we soon learned that she was overwhelmed; she had at least 5 tables. The server that delivered our meals was a little rude. He set the plates down and asked if we needed anything else and I mentioned that I had ordered milk to be served with the meal. He said that our server probably had that and walked away. His demeanor was surly and almost beligerant.
William ordered the Iron Lake omelet, which has ham and wild rice in it, served with hash browns and toast. The hash browns were only cooked on one side. While this is the current trend, it runs the risk of being cold/undercooked in the middle, which was the case today. The omelet was overcooked on the bottom and all the toast was burnt.
I ordered the french toast with bacon. Our server asked if I wanted the cinnamon roll french toast or the regular, then proceded to explain what the cinnamon roll french toast was. I ordered the regular, but ended up wishing I had ordered the other. The slices of bread were over an inch thick, and were not dipped in the batter long enough to soak into the middle. They were also barely warm, so when I saw our server, I asked her to heat them up. When I got them back, it was obvious they had been microwaved and the crust of the bread was very tough and rubbery. William finished my french toast (I was too full) and it took him almost 30 seconds just to cut through the bread with his knife.
Our server did bring my milk right after the food was delivered and she did check back after my reheat came back. She asked if it was better and when I told her that it was hotter, she walked away. She never apologized for the food being cold or delved further to see how it was other than the temperature. William had to wait for quite a while for a refill on his soda and after our plates had been cleared, we waited for more than 10 minutes for our check.
What a disappointment! Our last visit here was great and this one was was pretty bad. We'll have to wait a while before we go back.
Sunday, July 18, 2010
Sunday, July 11, 2010
IHOP, Maplewood-July 11, 2010
Rating: D
Before we even sat down, we were waiting 5 minutes for a table (which I have no problem with) and William noticed that the entry area was very dirty. The windows, floor and counter had obviously not been cleaned in some time, including snot on the wall.
At our table, it was again obvious that it had not been cleaned properly. the syrup dispensers were sticky and had a build up of old syrup sticking to the bottom. The salt and pepper shakers also had not been cleaned in some time.
We waited more than 5 minutes at the table to even be greeted and it was apparent that our server was overwhelmed.
I ordered scrambled eggs, bacon, hash browns and pancakes with apples on top. Everything tasted decently, but they put cold apple compote on top of hot pancakes, which cooled the pancakes. It would have tasted a lot better if the apples had been hot.
William ordered basted eggs, bacon, sausage, hash browns and toast. The eggs were over hard, not basted. A restaurant that serves breakfast all day and that is what they're known for should be well versed in all the different ways to cook eggs.
At one point, the manager came into the room (we were in a side room) and asked the server in the next section which table he was going to give up because the manager thought he had too many. At that point, he only had 4 tables, and three of them had their check. This was plenty loud enough for all the customers in the room to hear. Conversations like that should be in private, or, at the very least, in the back where there are only other employees. Consequently, if anyone should have been giving up tables, it should have been our server.
Our server was very inattentive and William had to wait a long time for a refill on his soda. I would have notified the manager of the issues, but after seeing his exchange with the server, I felt like he would blow me off.
The main concern, though, was just how filthy everything was. We should have walked out when we sat down - and will do so next time we are presented with the same situation.
William actually sent an e-mail to the company while we were still in the waiting area regarding the cleanliness of the restaurant. He received a reply stating that we should go back and ask for a specific manager. It is doubtful we will go back as we have had a few bad (and no good) experiences at this restaurant.
Before we even sat down, we were waiting 5 minutes for a table (which I have no problem with) and William noticed that the entry area was very dirty. The windows, floor and counter had obviously not been cleaned in some time, including snot on the wall.
At our table, it was again obvious that it had not been cleaned properly. the syrup dispensers were sticky and had a build up of old syrup sticking to the bottom. The salt and pepper shakers also had not been cleaned in some time.
We waited more than 5 minutes at the table to even be greeted and it was apparent that our server was overwhelmed.
I ordered scrambled eggs, bacon, hash browns and pancakes with apples on top. Everything tasted decently, but they put cold apple compote on top of hot pancakes, which cooled the pancakes. It would have tasted a lot better if the apples had been hot.
William ordered basted eggs, bacon, sausage, hash browns and toast. The eggs were over hard, not basted. A restaurant that serves breakfast all day and that is what they're known for should be well versed in all the different ways to cook eggs.
At one point, the manager came into the room (we were in a side room) and asked the server in the next section which table he was going to give up because the manager thought he had too many. At that point, he only had 4 tables, and three of them had their check. This was plenty loud enough for all the customers in the room to hear. Conversations like that should be in private, or, at the very least, in the back where there are only other employees. Consequently, if anyone should have been giving up tables, it should have been our server.
Our server was very inattentive and William had to wait a long time for a refill on his soda. I would have notified the manager of the issues, but after seeing his exchange with the server, I felt like he would blow me off.
The main concern, though, was just how filthy everything was. We should have walked out when we sat down - and will do so next time we are presented with the same situation.
William actually sent an e-mail to the company while we were still in the waiting area regarding the cleanliness of the restaurant. He received a reply stating that we should go back and ask for a specific manager. It is doubtful we will go back as we have had a few bad (and no good) experiences at this restaurant.
Thursday, June 17, 2010
Avatar
Rating: ehh...
Oh My God....
It's FERN GULLY with guns!!
Whatever... don't believe the hype. Still entertaining, we're glad we waited for it to show up in the local RedBox.
Oh My God....
It's FERN GULLY with guns!!
Whatever... don't believe the hype. Still entertaining, we're glad we waited for it to show up in the local RedBox.
Sunday, June 06, 2010
Iron Man 2
B+
We saw this recently with some friends at the Kerasotes (now AMC) Showplace ICON theater in Saint Louis Park. We had the VIP seating in the balcony (nice comfy chairs, tables, lottsa space and leg room). These seats are a bit more expensive than the regular admission seating and require reservations/pre-purchase, but they're worth it for the big-deal and/or long movies you really want to see in a theater.
Anyway, you've read the review we did for Iron Man last year. I have to say that IM2 suffers from some of the same problems. Bits of the movie are just plain too long and quite boring, some sections could probably have been left out as they lend not much to the movie over all, and my FAVORITE thing to pick on... scenes in the TV commercials and theater trailers were not in the actual movie (I really hate when studios do that).
Still, generic plot stuff: The son of a Russian scientist that Stark's father worked with years ago on the Arc Reactor (remember the first movie) either bought, stole or somehow acquired plans to the chest power source Tony uses to keep himself alive and power his armor. This guy (who for those familiar with the Marvel Universe is called Whiplash) builds his electric whip weapons and goes after Tony in Monaco at a car race. He fails cause Stark has a portable briefcase sized version of the armor and was able to beat Whiplash, who is arrested.
One of the sub-plots running through the movie is that Tony is slowly being poisoned by the very device keeping him alive, and he's been working on a new design without success. He takes some kind of drink he made up to stave off the effects of the heavy metal poisoning, but is still losing the fight.
Anyway, Whiplash gets out of jail and is hired on by one of Starks competitors who wants not only the power source, but armor suits of his own to sell to the military. Oh, somewhere in between the initial fight and these new suits being developed (remember how I said parts of it were too long?) Rhode's takes the Mark II suit (the silverish one) and hands it over to the Air Force, who in turn hand it off to this guy Hammer that's working with Whiplash now. They mod the heck out of the suit adding weapons and such and call it War Machine, which Rhodes still pilots.
Meanwhile, Stark continues thinking he's dead soon, and starts giving away his company (to Pepper) and tossing out compute files and papers and such, getting drunk and throwing parties.
He eventually discovers that the new element he needs to make a new power source that won't poison him was thought up by his father 20 or more years ago and left hidden in plain sight for Tony to find years later (which he does). Tony ends up creating this new element based on Dad's design and builds a new chest piece that miraculously not only gives him renewed strength gut heals him of the heavy metal poisoning as well, all with-in a few seconds.
Just in time, as Whiplash is taking over all these drones he built for Hammer, including the War Machine suit, and going after Iron Man again.
Big fight ensues, where whiplash dies, the drones are destroyed, Rhodes recovers and helps in the fight, and everyone that needs to live does so.
See? Pretty easy to sum up this movie. Provided I left out a couple people, and a bunch of junk that doesn't really matter to the story.
A good movie if you can get through the boring bits (and there are more than a couple) but worth seeing in the theater regardless if your a fan.
Oh, they find Thor's hammer in the desert of Nevada at the end of the movie (for the upcoming Avengers movie next year).
We did enjoy the movie, and we actually intend to see it again here soon, partly because we did enjoy it, partly because I started day-dreaming in parts of the movie and missed some bits (remember, boring bits). Still pretty good movie with quite a few funny bits thrown in.
We saw this recently with some friends at the Kerasotes (now AMC) Showplace ICON theater in Saint Louis Park. We had the VIP seating in the balcony (nice comfy chairs, tables, lottsa space and leg room). These seats are a bit more expensive than the regular admission seating and require reservations/pre-purchase, but they're worth it for the big-deal and/or long movies you really want to see in a theater.
Anyway, you've read the review we did for Iron Man last year. I have to say that IM2 suffers from some of the same problems. Bits of the movie are just plain too long and quite boring, some sections could probably have been left out as they lend not much to the movie over all, and my FAVORITE thing to pick on... scenes in the TV commercials and theater trailers were not in the actual movie (I really hate when studios do that).
Still, generic plot stuff: The son of a Russian scientist that Stark's father worked with years ago on the Arc Reactor (remember the first movie) either bought, stole or somehow acquired plans to the chest power source Tony uses to keep himself alive and power his armor. This guy (who for those familiar with the Marvel Universe is called Whiplash) builds his electric whip weapons and goes after Tony in Monaco at a car race. He fails cause Stark has a portable briefcase sized version of the armor and was able to beat Whiplash, who is arrested.
One of the sub-plots running through the movie is that Tony is slowly being poisoned by the very device keeping him alive, and he's been working on a new design without success. He takes some kind of drink he made up to stave off the effects of the heavy metal poisoning, but is still losing the fight.
Anyway, Whiplash gets out of jail and is hired on by one of Starks competitors who wants not only the power source, but armor suits of his own to sell to the military. Oh, somewhere in between the initial fight and these new suits being developed (remember how I said parts of it were too long?) Rhode's takes the Mark II suit (the silverish one) and hands it over to the Air Force, who in turn hand it off to this guy Hammer that's working with Whiplash now. They mod the heck out of the suit adding weapons and such and call it War Machine, which Rhodes still pilots.
Meanwhile, Stark continues thinking he's dead soon, and starts giving away his company (to Pepper) and tossing out compute files and papers and such, getting drunk and throwing parties.
He eventually discovers that the new element he needs to make a new power source that won't poison him was thought up by his father 20 or more years ago and left hidden in plain sight for Tony to find years later (which he does). Tony ends up creating this new element based on Dad's design and builds a new chest piece that miraculously not only gives him renewed strength gut heals him of the heavy metal poisoning as well, all with-in a few seconds.
Just in time, as Whiplash is taking over all these drones he built for Hammer, including the War Machine suit, and going after Iron Man again.
Big fight ensues, where whiplash dies, the drones are destroyed, Rhodes recovers and helps in the fight, and everyone that needs to live does so.
See? Pretty easy to sum up this movie. Provided I left out a couple people, and a bunch of junk that doesn't really matter to the story.
A good movie if you can get through the boring bits (and there are more than a couple) but worth seeing in the theater regardless if your a fan.
Oh, they find Thor's hammer in the desert of Nevada at the end of the movie (for the upcoming Avengers movie next year).
We did enjoy the movie, and we actually intend to see it again here soon, partly because we did enjoy it, partly because I started day-dreaming in parts of the movie and missed some bits (remember, boring bits). Still pretty good movie with quite a few funny bits thrown in.
Monday, March 15, 2010
Washington Square Bar & Grill, White Bear Lake
With my foot being broken for the last few weeks, we haven't been going out much, but that means that William's been cooking a lot, so we decided (on our way home from him picking me up from work) that we would go out. Using his iPhone apps, we found a place to try in White Bear Lake (15 miles from our location at the time).
Grade: C
We were told at the host stand that it would be a 10-15 minute wait. Their dining room only has about 12 tables and, apparently, they only had one server staffed, so they were controlling the flow by making us wait in the bar. We were able to find a table (for me to sit down) in the bar and waited at least 5-7 minutes before anyone came over. She asked us if we were waiting for a table, but looked confused. I guess sometimes they seat tables in the bar, so she wasn't sure if we were staying there or going to move. I ordered a martini and shortly after it arrived, our pager went off saying our table was ready.
We walked into the dining room where the host gave us a choice of table by the window or by the fireplace. I tend to get chilly by the window, so we chose the other table. However, it had not yet been wiped off. We had to stand there waiting until the host got a towel and wiped it down. (The seats never got wiped down. I had to brush crumbs from my chair.)
Greet time was a little longer than most people like, but he seemed friendly and gave us time to look over the menus after getting William's drink order (I still had my martini.) We waved him over when we were ready and he wrote everything down.
Starter was potato boats which were cold on the bottom and in the middle, burnt on top and had some bad spots. I wasn't going to finish the last one, but the server came over to inform us that the computer system had rebooted for no reason and he couldn't send our entree order to the kitchen, so it would be another 15-20 minutes. I asked if he could give them a paper ticket and he said the kitchen would not accept that since the system would be back up in 5 minutes or so. He did send the manager over, who apologized for the delay and took our starter off the bill.
Editorial: Every restaurant owner/manager should know that technology fails sometimes and they have to be able to run without it. Five minutes is a long time to a guest who is waiting for their food.
When our food finally came, my steak was undercooked and my broccoli was cold. When the server checked back, I asked him to heat up the broccoli. Without saying a word, he left to grab a small plate and held it next to my plate so I could scrape the broccoli from one plate to another. The only thing that was right was my baked potato. The "steak sauce" that was served with my meal tasted like Hormel chili that wasn't even heated up. William had ordered the chicken caesar wrap, which had luke warm chicken (apparently, it was supposed to be hot).
I did order another martini - these were signature drinks and neither one of them was very tasty. The mix of flavors just wasn't balanced.
I ended up taking most of my steak in a box, along with my broccoli and asked the server if there was a dessert menu. There isn't, and he rattled off the dessert choices, then added that the apple crisp takes about 15 minutes to make. If I had known that, I might have asked him to order that before I was done with my entree.
Anyway, we wanted to get home at that point, so we declined dessert and asked for our check.
Would we go back? Maybe. It might be a while, though, and it might be only for drinks and appetizers if we happen to be in the area.
Grade: C
We were told at the host stand that it would be a 10-15 minute wait. Their dining room only has about 12 tables and, apparently, they only had one server staffed, so they were controlling the flow by making us wait in the bar. We were able to find a table (for me to sit down) in the bar and waited at least 5-7 minutes before anyone came over. She asked us if we were waiting for a table, but looked confused. I guess sometimes they seat tables in the bar, so she wasn't sure if we were staying there or going to move. I ordered a martini and shortly after it arrived, our pager went off saying our table was ready.
We walked into the dining room where the host gave us a choice of table by the window or by the fireplace. I tend to get chilly by the window, so we chose the other table. However, it had not yet been wiped off. We had to stand there waiting until the host got a towel and wiped it down. (The seats never got wiped down. I had to brush crumbs from my chair.)
Greet time was a little longer than most people like, but he seemed friendly and gave us time to look over the menus after getting William's drink order (I still had my martini.) We waved him over when we were ready and he wrote everything down.
Starter was potato boats which were cold on the bottom and in the middle, burnt on top and had some bad spots. I wasn't going to finish the last one, but the server came over to inform us that the computer system had rebooted for no reason and he couldn't send our entree order to the kitchen, so it would be another 15-20 minutes. I asked if he could give them a paper ticket and he said the kitchen would not accept that since the system would be back up in 5 minutes or so. He did send the manager over, who apologized for the delay and took our starter off the bill.
Editorial: Every restaurant owner/manager should know that technology fails sometimes and they have to be able to run without it. Five minutes is a long time to a guest who is waiting for their food.
When our food finally came, my steak was undercooked and my broccoli was cold. When the server checked back, I asked him to heat up the broccoli. Without saying a word, he left to grab a small plate and held it next to my plate so I could scrape the broccoli from one plate to another. The only thing that was right was my baked potato. The "steak sauce" that was served with my meal tasted like Hormel chili that wasn't even heated up. William had ordered the chicken caesar wrap, which had luke warm chicken (apparently, it was supposed to be hot).
I did order another martini - these were signature drinks and neither one of them was very tasty. The mix of flavors just wasn't balanced.
I ended up taking most of my steak in a box, along with my broccoli and asked the server if there was a dessert menu. There isn't, and he rattled off the dessert choices, then added that the apple crisp takes about 15 minutes to make. If I had known that, I might have asked him to order that before I was done with my entree.
Anyway, we wanted to get home at that point, so we declined dessert and asked for our check.
Would we go back? Maybe. It might be a while, though, and it might be only for drinks and appetizers if we happen to be in the area.
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