OK, this is one time to NOT trust the photos online. There are some really nice photos of the outdoor seating area and the lovely little herb garden in garden boxes. Those photos must be from about 2-3 years ago.
The outdoor seating area is trash. The lovely painted tables are all old and rusted with peeling paint. The picnic tables are dirty and the dirt can't be scrubbed off (we tried). The herb garden is all neglected and overgrown. You can still see the mint, dill, chives, etc...but it is full of weeds and other crap.
So...that's the bad part. The good part was the food.
Mike, Anna and I went with Laurie and Beth...so between the 5 of us...we had a wide variety of things:
Beth got the turkey club. This was her first "go out to any restaurant" since the beginning of the pandemic. I think she was scared and even played it a little bit safe with her sandwich choice.
She said it was good. She got the homemade chips and said, they too were good. She said they looked over-cooked, but they didn't taste that way.
Laurie started with some hummus and pita bread. She was surprised (when she opened it) that the hummus was orange. I don't think I heard her say that the hummus was good/not good. I'm assuming it was fine. For a sandwich she got the daily special of a chorizo burger on a pretzel bun. It came with a few fried onion rings. It was spicy enough it made her nose run, and I know she enjoyed it.
Anna couldn't decide, so she actually got 2 sandwiches (and ended up taking the entire 2nd one home). She started with a chicken parm. She really liked it, but she tried to eat it with her hands (not knife and fork), and she was covered with sauce by the end (she said her hands looked like she had just "killed someone"). She also commented that when she began the sandwich the chicken was really crispy and good, but as she ate, it tended to get too soggy under all that sauce.
Then she got the "King" (think Elvis). This was a peanut butter/banana/bacon sandwich. She had it later in the weekend and said it was really good and had held up well in the refrigerator.
Mike got an Italian beef sandwich with giardiniera on it. He said it was good. He especially like that it was really full of meat.
I had eggplant parm. I like eggplant but no one else in my family does. I think in 35 years of being married, I've only made it once. So, I figured, what better time to get it than on a sandwich. It comes smothered in sauce and fresh spinach. I don't really think the raw spinach added much to the dish. It was a bit of a crunch on top, but no real flavor. I ate mine with a knife an fork (unlike Anna) and I totally agree with her...at the beginning the eggplant was hot and crispy but after a few minutes under all that sauce, it was soggy. I wonder if you could order the sauce on the side and dunk it??
We did proceed to have dessert. They have ice cream desserts. It was odd, they made the shakes in an actual old time milk shake maker but then poured it into a paper coffee cup to give to you...weird. The desserts were very average.
Here's my guess about this place...someone owns it and put a lot of time and effort into the opening of it a few years ago. It won some accolades and got put on some of the "Best Sandwich" lists. They fixed up the outside and made the tables and gardens nice. Then they owner hired people to run it for them and decided they had better things to do. So, now, it is being run by about 6-8 20ish year old boys. They make good sandwiches, but the outside looks terrible, the outside seating is horrid, the trash cans are all always overflowing, and the inside doesn't look like it would pass a health inspection.
The sandwiches are good, and they do a lively business. There were CONSTANTLY people coming and going with bags of sandwich orders.
We all said we'd go back to try more/different sandwiches...it is just too bad the outdoor are is such crap.
No comments:
Post a Comment