My Poison Pen

I'm going to come right out and say it: writing positive reviews for good restaurants isn't fun. There are only so many ways of saying a dish works, that it's tasty, fun to eat, well-conceived, yadda yadda. There are myriad ways, however, of saying something is bad. While a meal might be unsatisfying during the eating aspect of it, the glee I get from trashing it verbally can more than make up for shitty food and worse service. The crazy comments a negative review can inspire are also pretty damn amusing. 

The highlighted text below contains links to my original posts, if you are so inclined to read them.

A long-ago visit to The Melting Pot in Towson left us wondering why anyone would pay good money to eat hot garbage. On the upside, the meal provided me with a fun-to-write blog post. Additionally, some unhinged TMP stan left an outrageous comment while posing as a West Coast food journalist. That got its own blog post.

Milan was a restaurant/club that was not well-received by its Little Italy neighbors. We ate there once. The food was actually pretty decent, but our first impression wasn't so great.

"Stepping into the restaurant, I was immediately struck by a smell. No, not of garlic and shellfish, nor of long-simmered tomato sauce, but of bathroom. A nasty chlorine+potty smell. Granted, we were the first people in the restaurant, and possibly when there are more people in the place and the kitchen is in full swing, the smell isn't noticeable. But it's really off-putting for that to be the first sensation encountered. (I eventually got used to it.)

"Once upstairs on the main floor, I saw that the glossy veneer from two years ago, when the restaurant was new, has faded. The black paint on the wood floor is worn off in paths, the paint on the ceiling has bubbled and cracked, and the tables and chairs show wear. One of the high-backed chairs, which doesn't quite match the others, is patched up with white tape. I'm guessing that the intended effect of the stark white decor with touches of scarlet is "modern" and "classy." And I suppose it is. Classy like a strip club with bottle service. It's a place where Pauly D and The Situation would be completely at ease, hanging out one on of the lounges covered with upholstery straight out of a '72 Nova."

From a write-up about a quick trip to NYC, which included dinner at A Voce in Columbus Circle:

"While the first course was successful, the pici that I ordered for my entree was a total disappointment. Pici is a hand-rolled pasta, somewhat like a thick spaghetti. Imagine making a snake of modeling clay by rolling it between your palm and a table top, and you've got pici. Because they're somewhat thick and about  4" long, picking them up with a fork is like wrestling with a bowl of tarantulas. They're not easily twirled, so a fork full had random ends hanging out in each direction, some of which were happy to slap me in the face as I brought the fork to my mouth. Eventually, I used my knife to cut them into shorter bits. In any case, awkwardness was the least of the dish's problems. The sauce was a bolognese in name only. It had an agrodolce (sweet and sour) thing going on that could have been quite delicious had the sauce had any other thing going on, too. The tiny nubbins of ground duck (which could have been any meat - turkey, rattlesnake) served as a textural element only, and I couldn't taste the cocoa in the pasta. After three or four bites, I was bored with the dish. Thankfully, it wasn't a large portion, so I pushed on and finished it, knowing that a doggie bag wouldn't safely survive the three-plus hours it would take me to get home."

Restaurant Week is always a fine opportunity to eat crappy food. I have always thought that the reason for Restaurant Week is to lure in new patrons with a reasonably priced menu, hook them with amazing food, and turn them into repeat customers who are willing to pay full price. Apparently that memo is only in my head. A 2008 RW meal at Tabrizi's had a high point or two, but was otherwise unexceptional.

"This unadorned plate of worms/bran buds/Plah-Doh after a trip through a Fuzzy Pumper play set is actually Mr Minx's chocolate mousse. Or, more accurately, chocolate ganache - melted chocolate whipped with heavy cream. If it was real mousse, with egg in it, I'd be very surprised. It tasted ok, but really wasn't worth the effort of washing out the ricer."

Another fun post to write involved our 2011 meal at Alchemy, in Hampden. It was Restaurant Week, and clearly Alchemy couldn't handle the extra-ness of it all. Though we normally eat on the early side of dinnertime, when the restaurant isn't busy, the kitchen still had a problem getting the courses out on time. The first course took forever, and the entrees came out while we were still eating our apps. Our waiter, who had promised to "take care of us," never gave us a second look, even while we were juggling five plates of food on a tiny table. The food itself was uneven, perhaps too ambitious. Dishes had multiple components that were under-seasoned or improperly cooked, though the proteins were pretty good. My dessert, a cabernet blackberry sorbet, was outstanding, and the only thing that would prompt my return to Alchemy. As it was, we never went back, and the restaurant closed a couple years later. If you check out the post, do read the handful of entertaining comments.

Occasionally, friends rave over a restaurant enough that Mr Minx and I have to try it. Over the years, I've learned that not all of my friends have good taste. One couple in particular loved Silver Spring Mining Company. I suppose lots of people like the place, as the restaurant has multiple locations. We, however, were not impressed. The food we ate was...edible...but not good enough for a return trip. I took umbrage to a mixed-protein creole masquerading as a jambalaya, and a "Reuben" sandwich that had rye bread and thousand island, but not corned beef, sauerkraut, or Swiss. Additionally, it contained a "razor-thin slice of nearly-white supermarket blandness that is a sin even during the Winter, but worthy of eternal damnation during tomato season." I stand by that opinion.

Some people think I'm a food snob, but that's not true at all. I just expect good-tasting food that is properly made and falls within standards that are acceptable to any local health department. My BFF's 50th birthday party was held at the Kentmorr, a seafood restaurant on the Eastern Shore. The only thing I remember about that meal is being served tepid crab soup, one of those half-and-half jobbies that was a mix of Maryland crab and cream of crab. Apparently, someone had accidentally turned off the burner under the pot of cream of crab, which remained on the stove long enough to get cold. Soup with cream and seafood in it. Yeahhh....no thanks. 

Occasionally an otherwise decent meal has dishes that fall short of expectations. And sometimes those dishes are pretty bad. But that makes them fun to write about.

Barcocina dip

"The Barcocina dip, listed on the menu as "an Oaxaca queso fundido" had a curious fluffy texture studded with odd rubbery and flavorless bits of chorizo, topped with a whole poached egg (not fried, as the menu indicated). While the yolk was runny, the white was very firm and required a knife to cut and distribute through the dip. The accompanying tortilla chips were weeny, as if made from taco-sized tortillas, and not big enough to scoop up a decent amount of dip."

While we adored Jesse Wong's Hong Kong, a restaurant on the lakefront in Columbia, we felt the opposite about his Hunt Valley restaurant. Jesse Wong's Kitchen served various Asian cuisines, including sushi, but wasn't particularly good at any of them. At least not the food we tried on our two visits. After our disastrous first meal, a lunch, I swore I'd never set foot in the place again. Then we received a gift card from my Dad's girlfriend, which made me eat my words. Sadly, they were tastier than the food at Jesse Wong's Kitchen. Turns out the gift card had no balance, and I had to pay for the crap we ate. I was pretty pleased when the restaurant closed, though I was sad that Hong Kong eventually shut down as well.

I'm sure I've written about several more poor restaurant experiences over the years, but I want to include just one more in this post. It's another Restaurant Week meal, this time at Oyster Bay Grille. The problem was not the meal itself (which was pretty good), but the way management handled a situation.  

"In a few moments, the man who had shucked the oysters came by, ostensibly to apologize. Now, let me give some pointers on apologies for restaurants. Restaurant Apologies 101, if you will. The very first thing to do is to say, 'I'm very sorry.' The next thing to do is to offer recompense. 'Let me take the oysters off the check,' or some such. And that's it. Then go away and let the diners finish their meal. Sticking around to make excuses like, 'they were hard to open,' and 'this is why we put oyster forks out' are not acceptable. (Especially when there was only one oyster fork present, and it was jammed into the rind of a lemon. Were we to wrestle it out and then share it?) You work at a damn oyster bar--learn how to shuck a fucking oyster. Bleeding customers are not happy customers, and Mr Minx spent the rest of the meal in a foul humor. Especially when another man, presumably an owner or manager who had been randomly wandering, came around to say he saw something going on at our table. He did not offer an apology or anything else; it seemed that he was there simply out of curiosity. When each of these men returned to our table yet again, individually, to ask 'you ok?' later on during the meal, it must have been the thought of liability niggling them. It just plain annoyed us." 

OBG's chef read my post and, in a comment, offered a free dinner. Because he knows how to treat guests properly. We declined, but I had enjoyed my rockfish entree enough to request the recipe for one of our books. 

Have you had any bad meals or bad service recently? I'd love to hear about it....so leave a comment!

* Any products in this post that are mentioned by name may have been provided to Minxeats by the manufacturer. However, all opinions belong to Minxeats. Amazon links earn me $! Please buy!

Posted on Minxeats.com.

Guess What I Got in the Mail Last Night?

....a $30 gift card to Jesse Wong's Hong Kong, and a $30 gift card to Asean Bistro.  Looks like she *really* wanted to make me happy.

And I'll never have to eat at JW's Kitchen again.

First, the Good News...

...Jesse Wong's Kitchen's manager called me again to say her programmer did finally find that the gift card had an original $60 value when it was purchased on 11/16/07 (the day before my birthday) and then it had a $0 balance without any explanation or transaction date.  Apparently there was some monkey business, but the current manager basically said it wasn't on her watch and what's past is past.

The bad news: she thinks trying to issue a credit on my Visa would cause more trouble, so she's putting the $60 balance back on my JW Kitchen card and returning it to me via registered mail to guarantee I'd get it.  And she said because she will do anything to make me happy, she will give me an additional discount on my meal there.  I said if she really wants to make me happy, she can exchange the card for Jesse Wong's Hong Kong, since we love that place. Unfortunately, the three JW restaurants are owned by separate corporations, but she'd try.  As she's also in charge of Asean Bistro, I said I would also take a card from there if Hong Kong was no go. So we'll see how it all works out.

I hope I don't have to go back on my word and eat there again.  LOL  But if I do, I'll be calling her to make sure she's there when I am, so this whole f*cked up transaction doesn't happen again.

News As It Happens

I just received a call from Jesse Wong's saying that I would have to produce proof that the gift card was purchased. Their programmer found no evidence that the card had been used, nor had it been assigned any initial value to begin with. 

The onus should not be on me to prove the card was bought, nor should I have to make the purchaser go through her receipts and credit card statements from October and November of 2007.

Ridiculous business practices. For a lousy $60. What happened to "the customer is always right?"

Jesse Wong's Kitchen - Revisited

Oh, I know I said I'd never set foot in this place again, but my father's girlfriend gave me a $60 gift card for my birthday last year and we just now got around to using it. Believe me now when I reiterate that I will never go to Jesse Wong's Kitchen ever again. Not even if someone else is paying for it.

Mr Minx and I decided to attempt their sushi, since the hot lunches we had eaten the last time were so miserable. The miso soup was standard, rather skimpy on the tofu bits. Vegetable tempura included three pieces of bell pepper, four pieces of carrot, and one asparagus spear. All but the carrot were limp and overcooked, the batter was not at all delicate, and the dipping sauce had no flavor whatsoever. Not exactly off to a good start. But wait - it gets worse.

We ordered three maki sushi: Cowboy roll with shrimp tempura, cucumber and eel; Yellowjacket roll with spicy yellowtail, avocado, scallion, and Japanese radish; and the Dynamite roll with crabstick, salmon, and asparagus, battered and fried, topped with mayo & spicy sauce. The rolls were heavy on the rice and light on flavor - I noticed no cucumber in the Cowboy, no scallion in the Yellowjacket, and no salmon in the Dynamite. The "spicy sauce" was tasty, but served in dime-shaped dollops on each slice, rather than drizzled over the roll.

We also got the Sushi Deluxe entrée, comprised of about six pieces of assorted nigiri, a "Neptune maki" which was just a variation of California roll made with flavorless Asian blue swimmer crab, plus three hand roll-type pieces topped with lobster salad and roe, just roe, and a itty bitty baby octopus. I enjoyed the lobster salad, and Mr Minx appreciated the freshness of the tuna, but everything else was just meh.

Full to the brim, we ask for our check. I put down my $60 gift card and a credit card to handle the few dollars balance plus tip. Several minutes later, I notice our waitress at the register, seemingly having trouble with the gift card. She called over the only Caucasian working in the place to help her out; he seemed to be the assistant manager, but he was merely a dolt. He comes back to our table, squats down (I hate when they do that - it's like "I'm being condescending to you but so it doesn't seem that way, I'm physically putting myself below your level.") and asks "how much is the gift card supposed to be for?" I told him the amount and handed him the little envelope in which the card came, sporting the number in orange marker. Dolt then informs me that the card shows no balance.

Ok, let's let that sink in. My $60 gift card was suddenly a worthless piece of plastic. I ate $60+ worth of food that I didn't even enjoy, and I was going to have to pay for it.

I told Dolt that we had a bad dining experience there before and the only reason we came back was to use the gift card. He said he was sorry, and I said he wasn't sorry enough. He went to call his manager, while I seethed. Had there been more than two other people in the rather large restaurant, I would have raised a very loud stink, but sadly there was nobody there to hear me, apart from our waitresses who looked genuinely apologetic.

Dolt comes back and says that his manager is going to call me in the morning. That if there's money on the card she'll find it. But they charged the full amount to my credit card and that was that. So, in essence, Jesse Wong's Kitchen is calling me a liar and a cheat, claiming in not-so-many-words that my gift card was used, or perhaps even stolen.

When in actuality, the f*cker who issued the damn card was probably too stupid to remember to put the balance on it to begin with.

UPDATE, 2:43PM I just spoke to the manager who apologized profusely and said she was waiting to hear back from the programmer who set up the gift card program. He can apparently retrieve any and all transaction data. I am supposed to hear back from them by Friday. I feel better. It's amazing what a little bit of sincere apology and pleasantness can do.