| Welcome to The New Coffee Room. We hope you enjoy your visit. You're currently viewing our forum as a guest. This means you are limited to certain areas of the board and there are some features you can't use. If you join our community, you'll be able to access member-only sections, and use many member-only features such as customizing your profile, sending personal messages, and voting in polls. Registration is simple, fast, and completely free. Join our community! If you're already a member please log in to your account to access all of our features: |
| Dinner tonight; a rant. | |
|---|---|
| Tweet Topic Started: May 19 2007, 06:07 PM (79 Views) | |
| George K | May 19 2007, 06:07 PM Post #1 |
|
Finally
|
Up across the Cheddar Curtain this weekend (ah, a weekend doing nothing - I deserve it after a week of 14 hour days!). Mrs. George came up to me this morning and said, "Let's go for a late lunch/early dinner." Sounded good, so we planned on a 3pm meal. There's a town about 20 miles east of here (Burlington) that's kind of quaint. It's not a tourist trap. Just a nice town in Southeastern Wisconsin with a couple of furniture dealerships, antique stores, the obligatory Wal-Mart, etc. The downtown area is made up of curvy streets and old buildings, most of which are well maintained. On the web, I found what seemed to be a good place to eat. Old building, tavern, bar type of place. You know, the place that has ice-cold beer, and a really good, greasy burger. Steaks are probably good too. A bit pricey, with the dinner meals going up to $25-$30. My handy-dandy GPS got us there without a hitch, and when we walked in, it looked great. "Can I help you?" "Table for two, please." "I'm sorry, we don't start serving dinner until 5, and lunch ended at 2." "Thanks, but we will be back." Plan 2: Drive around. Found a restaurant that is a member of a small chain. Probably about 8-10 places in SE Wisconsin, and it looked reasonable, if uninteresting. I knew we were in trouble when we walked in and all the TV's hanging from the ceilings were tuned either to the Preakness or the Poker Tour. Second clue: Plastic covered, spiral-bound menus. Well, Mrs. George wasn't too hungry, but I was famished. After all, how can you screw up a strip steak and a salad? Easy - buy crappy meat. I love strip steaks, and expected something, if not exceptional, at least OK. It wasn't. It was the most memorable steak I had for a long time. It wasn't bad, it wasn't good, it was memorably unrememberable. It had nothing to it: no "steaky" taste, no "smokiness," no "meatiness." It was bland and boring. Not bad, just not good. Bah! Never going there again! |
|
A guide to GKSR: Click "Now look here, you Baltic gas passer... " - Mik, 6/14/08 Nothing is as effective as homeopathy. I'd rather listen to an hour of Abba than an hour of The Beatles. - Klaus, 4/29/18 | |
![]() |
|
| David Burton | May 19 2007, 07:42 PM Post #2 |
|
Senior Carp
|
George, that was a really interesting tale. Too bad I actually read through about 80% of the menu and could have told you which things were most likely to succeed: BJ Wentker's sounds like they’re trying to be French gourmet but aren’t. Their pairing of wine and suds with their meals is a dead give-away that they are contrefaire pas authentique. The best of the genre are places where the menus are hand written the dishes change ever so often, etc. They’re also quite pricey but memorable. A few even have atmosphere. Anyway if you ever decide to try Wentker's again, my choices would be the following: Avoid all the Appetizers – not a single one would probably stand on its own, as they should. If you must have a Special Salad, stick to the Classic Caesar with nothing extra on it. They conceivably wont screw it up. And of course have it served after your Entrée – which apparently comes with soup or salad anyway. Sometimes soups in these places can be good, mostly they’re miserable, but it depends on the weather and my mood; the colder it gets the more I like soup as long as it’s hot. Of the Entrées, the only one I would consider the first time in the place would be the Drunken Ribeye with the Steer Tenderloin coming in a close second. Why not the fish? Well, if I came on a Friday I’d certainly try their Baked Icelandic Cod or Lake Perch, but none of the others until I was sure they knew what they were doing. Any of their desserts would be ok, best if they were made there or made at least close by. It’s amazing how much fine restaurant desserts have become industrial both in their look and their taste. Wine too is of course a matter of taste as are suds. A real restaurant (after all the word itself is French) will have a separate listing and it will change too, so expect it to be hand written as well. I’d love to start a sub forum on here about places to eat that are memorable, miserable, absurd, unique, quixotic, etc. There is usually some of each in any mid to large sized community. Even my tiny area has it’s fair share. |
![]() |
|
| « Previous Topic · The New Coffee Room · Next Topic » |






6:11 AM Jul 11