Restaurant Review

9-24-09

For the past several years my husband, brother in law, and I have joked about starting a restaurant review blog. We like to check out new restaurants and tear them apart piece by piece. Sometimes the restaurants do very well but more often than not we destroy the restaurant in our personal critiques and never go back. We have a few friends who have accompanied our trio to a new place and they have been appalled at our harsh comments. With our high standards in hand we visited a new restaurant last night.

I will not hesitate to tell you exactly where we went and I sincerely hope that no one that reads this is offended. We went to Sweetfire Lodge and Grill in Gainesville, Ga. We were about to be seated when the boys thought it might be a good idea to sit outside. I was skeptical but I threw caution to the wind. After we were seated, we took the menus and began to peruse the selections. The menu was schizophrenic at best with choices as diverse as the colors of the rainbow. Michael and I finally went with the sirloin while David, the semi vegetarian went with the fish and chips--but he ordered mashed potatoes instead of the traditional chips. While waiting on our dinner fare we dove head first into their "vertical rings". From the description we thought it would be like the Outback Bloomin Onion. We thought wrong. What we got was a vertical stack of onion rings very thick in size and very thin in taste. The fried batter had a strange texture that lacked flavor and stuck to the roof of your mouth. It's nothing that salt and pepper couldn't have fixed but since we were on the patio apparently you have to special order those condiments. You also have to special order plates to go with your appetizer and also silverware to eat with. The onion rings would have also been better served with ketchup instead of whatever powder based nastiness they blended with what could have only been water? It was gritty and not quite mixed up all the way. I would've rather had the onion rings from the Varsity.

The service was friendly don't get me wrong. Our glasses were never empty and we got whatever we asked for, I just wish we didn't have to ask for quite so much. We also were served a basket of biscuits with an herb butter. They were good and so was the butter but it was something about the batter that made me think, these are not from scratch. Or I thought, I could've made these better at home. You really don't ever want to have that feeling when you are out, it defeats the purpose.

When the meal finally came, I noted that my steak was not cooked medium. I always ask for medium because I like a little pink. My steak was very thin and very brown. Michael's on the other hand was a very thick cut steak and was cooked medium instead of the medium well he asked for. Here is the difference: you can't uncook meat. Michael settled with his being more pink and I didn't want to wait 30 more minutes to get another steak so we started eating. The steak, despite it's cooking level was tasty. Michael enjoyed his as well. The real loser on the eating out deal was David. I cook for him all the time. He is not a picky eater. He usually cleans his plate and enjoys his meal. He actually said of his fish and chips that it was "too fishy" and he pushed the plate away after only consuming half. YIKES!! That's bad!

We declined dessert for fear of what we might get. This was a definite hit or miss night. Here's how I rated Sweetfire Lodge and Grill...

On a scale of 1-10:
Service: 9
Atmosphere: 7
Location: 7
Food: 5.5
Pricing: 6
Returnability: 2

The bottom line is that I can cook at home with more consistency, flavor, and for a better price.

Hope you enjoyed my review. Bon Appetit!
Have a blessed evening and thanks for reading my 29th blog.