Monday, August 22, 2011

phantom gourmet

Lousy restaurants beware! My husband and I are possibly your worst enemy. Nuno has taken to leaving reviews on the website Yelp.com Nuno and I have eaten at about 90% of the restaurants in St. Catharines so I'm sure we're qualified to give a reasonable restaurant review. 
He posted yesterday about our experience after a particularly rank breakfast at a diner just up the Welland Canal Parkway called The Good Eats Diner. We really could have used a fair warning. All signs pointed to this place as having great greasy spoon potential (we were hoping at best like Silks and at worst The Lancer or Opa and Oma's). With all the cars parked outside we assumed it was at least acceptable. Well, here's his review:

If you've ever wondered how anyone could possibly flub such simple breakfast fare as eggs over easy, home fries and pancakes, than The Good Eats Diner is for you!  Otherwise, I feel it's my civic duty to prevent anyone else from making the same mistake that I did this morning by setting foot in The Good Eats Diner at the Homer bridge.

For starters, this location was pretty filthy and we had to wipe down the surfaces ourselves before sitting at the table.  The eggs over easy were over cooked and they brought out white toast when we ordered whole wheat.  Also, for a bare bones diner with no flare, little menu variety and absolutely no skill in meal execution, charging extra for rye bread and onions on your home fries is a joke.  The home fries were dry, undercooked potato with an unmistakably familiar taste of, well, undercooked potato.  The pancakes were monsterous and sloppy in presentation with lumpy, uneven edges.  They were too thick, far too dense (who even wants dense pancakes?) and had a horrid, baking soda taste that instantly made me question whether they were poured from a box of dollar store variety, mix.  The offending pancakes bore no trace of dairy or eggs which would have imparted at least a little sheen, lightness and flavor and to top it off, the surfaces were speckled with pitch black, charred flakes that were either old batter from a dirty pan/griddle or teflon from a dirty pan/griddle.

The other offenses that Good Eats are guilty of include; refilling defaced Heinz ketchup bottles with runny, vinegary, off-brand tomato-flavoured red sauce, serving the single worst cup of diner coffee I've ever had - so bad that for the first time in my life, I refused a refill - supplying only 1 thin napkin with the 'meal' and worst of all, the gross misuse of the words, "Good", "Eats" and "Diner" in their name!  They should simply be called, "The".

Lastly, I don't mean to mislead anyone who enjoys 1 star dining.  I really wanted to give them a zero star rating but yelp doesn't give that option.

Ah, this review cracks me up. It already has two users rating this review as 'funny'. Way to go Nuno! We need you to perform more of your 'civic duty' and keep the hilarious reviews coming!!

I've set this all up to look like we are the ultimate food snobs. Don't worry, inviting us for dinner won't land you on a negative Yelp review. We almost always love what we eat when visiting friends and family. The simple act of the invitation of having us over and spending time is of value to us. I'd say we are probably the least judgemental of dinner guests because we know the kind of effort it takes to put on a nice dinner and aren't pain-in-the-asses with food restrictions or aversions. We just have an issue with paying money for food prepared poorly.

4 comments:

alicia said...
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Erin said...
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Erin said...

bwhaha! I can’t even IMAGINE what Ramsey would have said about this joint! I shutter to think.
We were saying that Alton Brown should have done what Roger Ebert did in trademarking ‘Two Thumbs Up’ and trademarked the term “Good Eats” therefore forbidding the misuse of it.

Erin said...

Alica, sorry! I accidently deleted your comment. How can I get it back?