WARNING! TRY NEW RESTAURANTS AT YOUR OWN RISK

In the small town where I live, the opening of a new restaurant is sometimes front page news. Especially if they’re hard up for news that day.  This owner must have known someone at the newspaper, because he got a great write-up, indicating he was a gourmet chef  just doing this town a favor to open a place here.

We fell for the story, and looked forward to going out for our usual Sunday Brunch.  There are a couple of restaurants  here in town who do a great job, but we decided to give this new one a try.  Big mistake. The place was filled to capacity, thanks to all the free publicity.  We arrived at ll:35.  The people at the table behind us kept turning around and looking toward the kitchen and complaining that they hadn’t yet been served. We figured they were simply the impatient type.  Not us, we had plenty of time.

Ten minutes later, a waitress came to take our drink orders,  and we had our coffee and tea within 5 minutes. She then took our food order—poached eggs and a bowl of cheese grits for me; bacon, eggs, toast and hash browns for my husband.  A few minutes later, a man emerged from the kitchen and left the restaurant. Ten minutes later, he came back with a bag full of egg cartons.  Apparently, they had run out of eggs.  This meant another fifteen minute wait while they prepared our order. My hard poached eggs came,  served on a large white plate.  There isn’t anything very appetizing about a couple of rubbery eggs on a cold plate.  The cheese grits were dry, with the consistency of rice.  Cheddar cheese had been sprinkled over the top of the grits. One bite was enough for me.  My husband’s bacon was not crisp, it was soggy and fatty. The hash browns were pale brown.  He tried to finish most of it, but the food simply  didn’t go down very well.  By 12:30, we were ready to leave.

 We didn’t feel it was the fault of the waitress, so we left her a good tip, but  thought it only fair to voice our complaints.  She explained that actually, we had come late for breakfast at 11:30, when they were actually only expecting to serve lunch, so they weren’t prepared for us.  Funny, all the other restaurants in town have no problem serving Sunday breakfast around noon.  

It’s sad, really.  This place has been open six weeks, and they still don’t have it together.  No wonder new restaurants fail at such an alarming rate.