A BAD RESTAURANT EXPERIENCE

TV shows have been written around them. We’ve all had them, and we will continue to have them. There are certainly worse things that can happen to you, but for some reason they make us very angry; sometimes to the point of showing our posteriors. What are they…bad restaurant experiences and I had once last night.

Twas the night after the Iron Bowl and I wasn’t particular happy. When that game was over, I wanted a nice dinner to get a little bit of consolation. Also, this has not been a particularly good week, even though I love Thanksgiving. I found out that a dear friend of mine, someone that I have been friends with for a very long time, has an aggressive cancer that is in stage three. She will soon begin an intense chemo regimen.

Back to last night! Wentzel’s Oyster House, an old established Mobile restaurant, opened a restaurant in Tuscaloosa about a year ago (I think). I like the Wentzel’s in Mobile, although I prefer Felix’s Fish Camp when I’m down there. A friend of mine that went to the game with some other friends and I decided that we would try this newer Wentzels’s.

When we arrived at the restaurant, the parking lot was not full. While this surprised me, I was okay with it because this should mean a shorter wait. We were told by the hostess that the wait would be about fifteen or twenty minutes. To me this is nothing and I was again pleasantly surprised. For the wait, my friend and I went to the bar and found two empty stools. This where our luck started to run out. We had a chatty bartender and I was definitely not in the mood for “chatty”. I was in more of a mood to sit and brood.

We were taken to our table in the promised fifteen or twenty minutes, which was good. However, after we were seated, no one came to wait on us. The ones that were waiting on other clientele were running around with frowns on their faces and acting like they didn’t want to be there. After I was unable to make eye contact with any of them, I suspected that we might have been seated at a table that was not assigned. I also suspected that they were short of help. And that’s not good for what is sure to be a busy evening.

I was finally able to flag a young man down and asked if anyone was assigned to our table. He was nice and indicated that he would take care of us. Of course, we immediately put our orders in because we didn’t want him to get away and not come back. The young man, whom we later found out was one of the managers, appeared to be very capable and our food arrived in what I would consider a timely manner.

While the appetizer that we shared was decent, my entree, flounder béarnaise, left a lot to be desired. It was soggy and I question whether it was real flounder. It was supposed to be topped with a crab meat dressing. There was soggy dressing on top of the flounder, but I found no evidence of crab meat. The béarnaise sauce was bland and probably came out of a jar. The lettuce in my salad was primarily made up of iceberg and I don’t particularly care for iceberg, preferring spring mix or romaine. To top it off, the baked potato was a bit undercooked, and we all have experienced undercooked baked potatoes. My friend ordered the friend oyster/fried flounder combination and said that her food was overcooked and a bit tough.

When the waiter came back and asked if we wanted desert, we said no and indicated that we were ready for our checks. We didn’t complain, but were ready to get out of there and head back to Birmingham, When our checks arrived, we were given small discounts and that was nice. The waiter/manager indicated that they were indeed short of help because a number of the wait staff had been allowed to take vacation that day. That was a mistake, in my opinion, because the evening after the Iron Bowl would surely be one of their busiest days of the year.

While the above was certainly not a major disaster, it wasn’t the satisfying dinner that I was hoping to have after a disappointing afternoon. Will I go back there? Sure, I’ll give them a second chance, but that’s all.

I don’t think I’ve ever written about a good restaurant experience and I do have a lot of them. It’s always the bad ones that you remember and sometimes end up laughing about for months and even years.