You Are What You Eat: Burger King Adventures

Is it no wonder that this chain is going down the tubes?

I went on the Burger King Restaurant to offer up a complaint in regards to the local BK franchisee. You are only given 500 characters in order to state your complaint. 500 characters is not a whole lot to relate practically any incident. But the whole scenario is typical of why Burger King continues to fail, and is now behind Wendy’s in Fast Food sales.

I don't have that original complaint that I wrote, but it's obvious from their reply that Corporate BK thinks all their customers are a bunch of dummies. I tried writing a reply to their canned response, but you are unable to do that. The email is computer generated and there is no contact information and replying to it just gets you a no such email return.  So much for consumer relations.

Here is what they wrote to me in regards to my complaint. Keep in mind that this response in no way addresses what I had to say, and simply reiterates a talking point about Franchisees opting out of certain corporate sales, a fact I am very well aware of.  If I had thought of it, I would have saved my original comments.

Dear Mr. R,

Thank you for taking the time to contact BURGER KING® restaurants Guest Relations with your inquiry. As a valued guest, your comments and observations are important to us.

Many of our BURGER KING® restaurant locations are franchised owned and operated. As such the locations are independent business entities; federal regulations prohibit us from dictating certain policies such as pricing  and promotions.

Thank you again for bringing this matter to our attention and rest assured that your comments have been forwarded to the appropriate management team so that they may be aware of your concerns. We value your opinion and look forward to serving you again in the near future.

Kind Regards,

BURGER KING® restaurants Guest Relations

Here is my reply:

Date: Fri, 21 Mar 2014 21:27:54 -0700

Subject: Re: Response from BURGER KING(R) Guest Relations

I understand about some franchises not adopting certain corporate pricing policies. I'm a very informed person. This is not news to me. That's fine. I’ve run into that several times, most notably at the local Pizza Hut which often refuses to offer up a corporate special.  So I was aware of this before I wrote my comments.

However, I was unable to relay the whole story in the very restrictive "50 characters or less" one is limited to on your web site. Between that restriction and your canned computer generated response the whole exercise was kind of pointless and irrelevant.

And worse yet, your  response does not even attempt to address the issues. Just another case of where the consumer seems to be an afterthought at Burger King. But since BK is nothing more than just another investment by an equity firm, who could care less about customer service and being responsive to consumers, it is no wonder that they continue to fail and fall mightily. The franchise here in Wasco is the epitome of all that is wrong with Burger King.

The fact is that this particular franchisee located in Wasco WAS selling the Deluxe Fish Sandwiches at the sale price of 2 for $5, and was doing so for at least a week. Then for no sensible reason they drop it right in the middle of the promoted special with no explanation while corporate continues to shill this particular deal on television and on their web site. It would have been one thing to not have the special from the beginning, but it's quite another to institute it and then boot it.

This should be a problem to not only the BK Corporation, but especially the management and ownership of this particular franchise. It was because I had previously been able to buy this sandwich at this discounted price that I stopped at this particular restaurant on this particular night. I mean for Pete's sake, when your competition across the street is selling Fish sandwiches 2 for $4 and doing booming business, you'd think it'd be a no brainer for the BK in Wasco to continue onward with something they had already started, at least through Lent, and especially in an area that is heavily populated by those who faithfully observe the no meat on Fridays during the Lenten season.  If the special was over chain wide, that would have been one thing.  This is another thing altogether.

Frankly, there was a time I wouldn't stop at that BK location at all as the service was very poor, and often the attitude of those working seemed to be quite lackadaisical to say the least.

One of the reasons I quit going to this location and most other BK’s previously was because time after time after time one is told to drive around to the front and park. This would be okay if it was extremely busy, but it seldom is. This policy seems to be in play whether you are the only car in the drive-thru or if there are two, or even three. At no other franchise in the area whether it is McDonald's, Carl's Jr., Taco Bell or Jack-in-the-Box, does this on a regular basis or seems to have this problem. When it does happen at those locations, it's on a very very rare occasion.

So for a long while I just quit giving Burger King, especially this particular franchise any consideration at all. And judging by the amount of traffic, or should I say lack of, at this location as compared to the other chains on this stretch of highway, it would seem a good number of people feel as I do.

But after about a year or so I decided to give it another try after being enticed by your 2 for $5 menu which I thought was a good deal. And when I returned, the service seemed to have improved.

But for the past several weeks it's been back to the same policy of pull around, park in the parking lot, and we'll get to you when we get to you despite the fact that at times there are no other vehicles. And now this bit of idiocy with the Fish Sandwich.

What makes it a bit loony tunes is the fact that there is little difference between the regular fish and the Deluxe except for a piece of cheese and an onion. So now thanks to that particular franchise first adopting the special then dropping it for no reason other than the fact that by dropping the cheese they can charge you another 60 cents per slice and think you’re stupid enough to pay it(they have always carried all other 2 for $5 deals including this one initially), and most of all your lack of a true response, I'll be crossing BK off my list again. Believe me, there are many others who did this long ago.

Where I work there are several people who no longer go to Burger King. I would tell them that I was the same way but since I started returning, things had improved. But now, I'll have to tell them it was a mirage. There is a McDonald's directly across the street, there is Jack-in-the-Box less than a block away, and a Carl's Jr. not too much further down the road. There is a Taco Bell just a block away and a Pizza Hut right across the street as well. One would think that given these circumstances, BK would value it's customers more by not only giving them an opportunity to communicate better on their web site, but something better than a form response.  As a matter of fact, your canned reply has irritated me ten times as much as the actual event.

Because I, my girlfriend, and her sister, all have busy schedules we eat out more often than not and spend a huge amount of money in this town. It's just sad that this franchise could be doing so much better, but when the owner, the management, and the corporation don't seem to care, then it's time to cross BK off my list once again.  This time for good, and I will take along with me any others I can convince to stay away.

Thank you for letting me state my experience with your restaurant. Sometimes being honest takes a lot more than "500 characters." And if BK really cares about its customers and its reputation, than you would think that they would contact the owners and manager of this franchise (if it is indeed that) and ask them what exactly is going on. Too bad corporate is willing to let poor franchisees sully their reputation.  I doubt that things will change.

A Day in the Life: Soda Shopping at the Super Duper

I haven’t lived  in many one horse towns in my life, but those few  were always within shouting distance of a major Metro area.  For instance, when I lived in Xenia, Ohio we were only about ten or eleven miles from Dayton.  One could argue about whether Dayton is a major Metro area, but they would lose  However,  for the last ten years my ass has been parked out here in the Bum Fuck Egypt Land of California known as Wasco. 

Wasco is bigger than Xenia is at least area wise but  I’m not to about to trouble myself with a population and square mile check on Google to prove that statement true or false.  I’ll leave that up to all you internet trolls that happen by and want to blast me over my accuracy.

There wasn’t a lot to do back in Xenia Town.  But as I said before, it didn’t matter because you could head up to Beavercreek which was right next door, or head on into Dayton &  Kettering, or if you wanted to venture further, Centerville.  Of course, there are some areas of Dayton you would never really want to drive to or drive through unless you’re carrying a 357 in your lap, but that’s something else altogether. And besides, there are places in Bakersfield where I wouldn’t want to hang out either.  And for that matter, I’m not sure I’d take a late night stroll here in Wasco either.

So in Xenia,  it wasn’t like you were really far away from anything such as decent restaurants, movie theaters, or shopping malls.  And Xenia, although smaller than Wasco, had a Wal-mart, a Kroger, and a K-mart  so all your shopping needs could be fulfilled right there without leaving the city limits.  And best of all, you could stop by the Circle K there in town and say hello to my old Boss, Don, and former roomie Bill if you wanted  

Here in Wasco, which is 30 miles from Bakersfield as the crow flies, we have a K-mart that is really half assed, and a Save Mart where you don’t save a fucking helluva lot 90 per cent of the time so the name is very misleading  

Also in Wasco, there are  a slew of privately owned small  restaurants, most of them Mexican, one Chinese, and then you have the usual Big Chain Joints such as McDonald’s, Taco Bell, Burger King, Jack-in-the-Crack (as I call it), Subway (which I frequent quite a bit), Pizza Hut, Dominos, and inside K-Mart there is a Little Caesers where you can get a ready made Pepperoni Pizza for just five bucks.  That’s pretty good because 8 miles up the road in another local one horse half assed town, called Shafter, that same pizza will cost you $1.99 more.

There is also a Denny’s that we frequent unless we have a bad experience or get bored with it which has only happened once.  Then we didn’t go for a while but it’s probably as much out of getting bored with the menu than then being really pissed off.

And then there is Perko’s, a place that we used to frequent regularly  until they worked their way onto The Girlfriend’s and mine Shit List and they now reside in a place of prominence on that list  along with The Elephant Bar.  After two years on the Shit List and not having set foot in the joint during that time, I took my son there to give Perko’s  another chance at Redemption a couple of weeks ago. 

Nope, even with Denny’s having opened down the street giving them competition, they were still crappy food wise and service wise.  I guess people tend to eat there because citizens of small towns become creatures of habits.

So it was a few days ago that I ventured out to pick up my honorable son from work, and to head to Save Mart to replenish my Soft Drink supply.  A man who is out of Diet Pepsi, is a man in an extreme state of desperation.

Normally, I would have headed to K-Mart, because the general rule of thumb about soft drinks in Wasco is that the K-Mart regular price is usually cheaper than the Save Mart Sale Price. 

But recently Save Mart has had one and a half  liters of Pepsi products for ninety nine cents.  Sometimes I can get full 2 liters for a buck, but they are too large for the refrigerator at work, which means I have to pour the stuff into smaller bottles which is a real pain in the ass. 

At other times I’ll just stop at the Circle K before work because they have one liter  bottles of Lipton Brisk Lemon Flavored Diet that tastes like someone puked lemons into the bottle and sprinkled some tea on afterwards.  But I drink it anyway sometimes  because a one Liter of Diet Pepsi  there will cost you $1.99, and a little 20 ounce bottle of Diet Pepsi  will cost you $1.59 plus tax and the added California fee of 10 cents per bottle which is for recycling.  It can get to be an expensive habit.  So the 99 cent one and a half  liters at Save Mart were working out very well for me, but I doubt they will be around for ever and if they are, certainly not at that price.  Not at Save Mart.

So we head into the Super Duper Market, I  look around the front of the store where the one and a half  liters have been displayed and I don’t see them.   I  decide that they weren’t selling them any longer.  Josh standing next to me, is silent.   So unless they had moved them back to the regular soda shelves, I knew I was out of luck.  After grabbing a box of microwave popcorn, and a bunch of bananas for about  two dollars, we head that way.

Up in the Soda Aisle, we don’t see what I was looking for but they do have two liter bottles of Pepsi Products, 4/$1.  I decide to grab some, and that I would just have to put up with pouring them into smaller bottles.  But then I notice that there is a “Limit of 4 Per Customer.”  There’s always a catch so we only put four into the shopping cart.

Down beneath the two liters,  on the lower shelves we see that there is a so called  deal on  twelve pack Pepsi  cans.  When I buy cans, they are strictly for drinking at home.  An opened can on my desk at work is a sure disaster waiting to happen.  With plastic bottles, I can keep the lid on that disaster so to speak.  But it is buy two, get one free and some quick math tells me that twelve bucks for thee comes out to about $4 a twelve pack, and that baby sister, is not such a hotsy totsy deal.

Off to the left we see some cans of coke products on sale.  But I'm not a Coke person at all.  I will drink Diet Coke if the price is right, but it has to be a really exceptionally great discount.  In this case, the price is $5.99 for a twelve pack, which is no deal at all because it’s the  same as the Pepsi.  But if you buy two you get three free, which brings the cost  per twelve down to about $2.40 a twelve pack.  That is nothing to sneeze at these days and one I probably could never get elsewhere  even at K-Mart or even Wal-mart.   And I also see they have a new type of Diet Coke that uses Splenda rather than Aspartame, so I’m curious enough to give it a shot.

We begin putting the soda’s into the shopping cart, two of the new Splenda Flavored ones, two of the regular Diet Coke, and one Sprite for the girlfriend.  I was just about to put the last twelve pack into the car when Josh sees the very extremely  small print that we hadn’t noticed before.  We had seen the “limit 3 free coke 12 pack can products” but had missed this:

Minimum $25 Purchased Required For Promotional Price…$25 Excludes Price of Coke Purchase.

I look in the cart. We had the four two liters at a dollar each.  We had a box of Microwave 94% Fat Free Popcorn for about $4.99.  We had about $2.00 worth of bananas for a total of about $12.  And that’s all there was, not even close to the $25 dollars needed.  And I knew there was not twenty five dollars more worth of stuff that we wanted to buy.   We began putting the twelve packs back on the shelf.

“I wish they still had the one and a half  liters,” I tell Josh.

“They’re at the front of the store,” he replied casually.

“What? You saw them?  Where?  I didn’t see them?  Why in the hell didn’t you tell me?”  I asked him pointedly.

“I thought you saw them,” he replies.

So I’m feeling kind of foolish when  he guides me to where he had seen the one and a half  liters.  And sure enough, they were there.  Okay, so maybe I need a new set of glasses and should have seen them the same as he did.

We ended up getting an even dozen of Diet Pepsi, and I add a couple of Mountain Dews for The Girlfriend.  We now had our $25 dollar purchase so we headed back up to the soft drink aisle to get the coke deal.  If nothing else, I am a savvy shopper.

Of course, they only had a couple of check out lanes open so we did have to wait and when one is waiting at a Supermarket, they can’t help but see the covers of all of the tabloids.  One of them asking us about some celebrity  with a major cellulite problem telling us to look inside to find out the identity of the mystery lady.

My guess was it was Kirstie Alley, but we never found out because we didn’t really have time to thumb through it.  So it will forever remain a mystery unless you know and want to share that information with us.  There was also this one.

Josh didn’t know who this particular  Denise was.  I guess he’s lived in a cocoon for the past twenty years, or he’s as smart as his old man and this stupid shit doesn’t concern him..  So I quickly explained about her being Charlie Sheen’s ex-wife and that she had starred in several movies including Starship Trooper that we had watched together a few months ago.

“Oh her,” he acknowledged.  “And we care about this why?”

“We don’t,” I answered.  “Unless she’s being photographed naked, and then we would care.”  I told him. “And she may regret her boob jobs, but I think most men are really appreciative.”

We finally made it through the check out lane.  The total was about $47 bucks I think.  Not bad and we had enough soda to last us quite a while, and I had enough 1 1/2 liters for work for a couple of weeks.  All in all, I think we could label this shopping spree a success.  Except for the identity of the mystery cellulite lady.  Okay, I’m being nice.  She’s just fat.

You Are What You Eat – Salad Wars!

A few days ago I was detailing and lamenting about a  rather shitty dining experience at the Elephant Bar Global Grill and Monkey Droppings Kitchen.  Among the many things I was bitching about was the crappy tiny salad they give you for just $4 extra dollars.  To be more precise, what I said was this:

It was bad enough that for four dollars, there wasn’t much there, but they used those damn miniature round tomatoes that I absolutely abhor.  And for four bucks, if they  aren’t going to use real tomatoes, you would have thought they could have put more in the way of vegetables in it, like maybe some olives, cucumbers, mushrooms, or onions.  I mean, hell, the salads at Denny’s are better than this and only cost me $2.95.  Now I know another reason why it was so damn dark.  They didn’t want you to be able to see how skimpy some of the food items were.

Yesterday my son Josh and I ate at a local Buffet restaurant in Bakersfield called Hodel’s.  For about $12 a person including drink, you can fill up on some pretty decent food.  In fact, if you decide you want just the salad bar you can do so for a smaller price then if you have a full dinner or lunch.  So I went to town on the salad bar, probably a bit much, loading it up as highh as I could without having it spill over the plate.  By the time I finished, this is what it looked like:

And I could have ate two or three of these if I so desired, but this one was enough.  Now I’m not going to wax poetic about it’s dietary properties or lack thereof, but a cousin of mine stated on Facebook: 

Omit the croutons corn and creamy dressing and swap the ham for chicken, and you've got a healthy salad.

To be honest, they didn’t have any little bits of chicken squares, although you could fill up on all the chicken you wanted at the dinner bar.  And I suppose I could have scooped up a breast and hand chopped it up into my salad, but the thought never occurred to me.  As for the corn, it really wasn’t that much but I guess I could have easily left it off and wouldn’t have noticed it was even missing.  And I debated for ten long seconds about putting on the croutons, I really did.  But some of  the little crispy buggers jumped up on my plate when I wasn’t looking. Yeah, my will power has been headed down Crapville Lane for about four or five days now.

As usual though, I’m getting away  from the point I want to make here.  The question is this:   why does a place that charges an arm and a leg for a meal, then charges you a knee and an ass cheek more for a tiny ass crappy salad with nothing in it? 

Take a place like Olive Garden as compared to a half assed place like the Elephant Bar.  At Olive Garden, you not only get all the damn tasty bread sticks you can eat,  you also get an endless salad, and it doesn’t cost you a penny more.  It’s part of your meal. 

And if Hodel’s, Sizzlin’ and even Marie Callendars  can give away salad by the tons  included with the price of your  meal or damn little extra, why the hell can’t the fucking Elephant Bar give you one decent salad for that damn four bucks?  I mean, is the cook pocketing about $3.50 of that and splitting it with the manager?  Or is the manager cheating on his food costs and taking extra home to save up for that bit 60 inch flat screen hanging around down at Best Buy with the stereo surround sound system and the 3d goggles?   If the salad had been worthwhile, I wouldn’t even mention the lousy four Washington spots.   But it sure as hell wasn’t worth what we paid for it, and probably wasn’t worth no more than two bucks if that much.

I don’t know.  Maybe I’m wrong.  The place was packed as evidenced by the fact that we had to wait 45 minutes for a table.  But then again, there were a couple of parties going on, and it was obvious that at least half of the patrons were crocked to the eyeballs.  So like I said, they probably didn’t even notice or care how really lousy the food was.  But maybe I’ll write a real letter to the company and be very precise and succinct in my displeasure:  Dear Elephant Bar:  You suck.

You Are What You Eat-Nui Nui Coconut Shrimp, Chicken Teriyaki Rice Bowl & Lemon Garlic Chicken Breast at the Elephant Bar Global Grill & Wok Kitchen

So I finally got the MRI out of the way and was pretty hungry by  by the time I finished.  I actually may have fallen asleep in the giant radiology tunnel of death  because unlike the last time when they scanned my brain, I was able to wear noise reducing headphones.  Since the last MRI was to see how many air pockets were cluttering my brain, I couldn’t use the ear muffs then.  We arrived  at the radiology place around 6:30 and I was out of there by 7:20.

So the girlfriend and I had our usual lame debate as to where to have dinner. 

He:  Where do you want to eat?

She:  I don’t care.  Where do you want to eat.

He:  Wherever you want to.

She:  I don’t care.  It doesn’t matter to me.

He:  Doesn’t matter to me either.  We can go to Hodel’s or we can go to the Elephant Bar which is just up the road.  We haven’t been there for four or five years now.

We opted for the Elephant Bar.  I remember the last time we had eaten there it was with some friends who are now, ex-friends.  That tends to happen when you really get shafted by your so called friends. At least when friends do it, you can ex-friend them.  With family, your always going to be related like it or not.  Sort of like my racist half-brother.  I don’t acknowledge his existence, but we’re still related. 

But I digress.  I couldn’t tell you what I had on that last visit to Elephantitis Food Joint,  but I vaguely remember it as being  really good.  Then again, that could have been the air pockets in my brain conjuring up some false memories.  I’ll have to ask Dr. A.C. Neurologist about that one.

The Elephant Bar & Girl or as they like to call it:  Elephant Bar & Grill Global Grill and Wok Kitchen, sits on the corner of the highway, directly facing the California Pizza Kitchen.  Separating the two buildings  is a fancy shmancy  fountain, which you can opt to sit around and admire as you wait for your table.  And a quick glance of the situation told us we were going to be waiting a while.

In this case, a while turned out to be about 45 minutes.  The girlfriend and I opted to wait inside in the air conditioning, figuring that if you’ve seen one fountain, you’ve seen them all.  And when the temperature is pushing 100 degrees, you can do without the view unless of course you intend to go wading around in the water and probably get your drunken ass arrested.

The first thing you notice about the inside of the Elephant Bar, is how freakin’ noisy the place is.  After a couple of minutes of waiting, I was ready to drive down to the MRI place and borrow their noise cancelling ear muffs..  I opted for messing with my I-phone instead, thinking I might take some lame assed pictures to throw up on the blog.

I don’t know how long we had been sitting there waiting  when my girlfriend leaned over and almost shouted in my ear so I could hear her over the din.

“Look at that girl,” she said.

“What girl?” I replied looking up from my serious game of Wheel of Fortune.  There were several

“The skinny girl,” she whispered loudly in my ear.  “The blonde.”

“What about her?” I asked.  I had seen many thin girls in my lifetime, even dated a few here and there, so seeing one more wasn’t exactly a big revelation for me.

“She don’t have any tits!” My girlfriend explained. 

And with that I knew that my girlfriend was really really bored and that like me, she needed to learn to play games on her phone to keep her wandering mind occupied.  Yes, the girl didn’t have much in the mammary department but I didn’t see that it matter much.  I thought she was kind of cute, in a certain Mia Farrowish kind of way when you remember how Mia Farrow looked in the early years of Peyton Place.  No, I won’t put up a picture.  Just Google it. 

What I noticed more was how all the help looked like they were modeling new Wal-mart Uniforms.  Either that or they were going to their night jobs at the all night  AM/PM convenience store down the road,  right after they closed this joint up. I guess conformity rules the days.  I’ve seen better uniforms.  I’ve seen worse.  Hell, I’ve worn worse more than once in my life.  So what does this have to do with our meal?  Not a damn thing. Just killing time.

But after what seemed like an eternity, we were finally escorted to our booth where the noise level jumped another ten decibels give or take a few.  One thing I know is that air pockets in the brain or not, I would have remembered the noise level  if it had been of this magniturde on our last visit.

Then there was the darkness problem.  The Girlfriend had not brought her glasses in with her because generally in good light, she doesn’t need them and who knew that we would be having dinner at  Mammoth Caves.

 

So she borrowed my glasses and began looking through them as if they were a magnifying glass straight out of Sherlock Holmes.

As for myself, I already knew what I wanted.  I wanted some kind of grilled chicken.  That’s all I ever wanted these days.  You see, I’ve been on this diet since early February.  At that time I had ballooned up to 316 lbs.  I am now down to about 235 lbs.  So nine times out of ten you either have a salad of some kind, fish, or chicken. 

The chicken in this case was Lemon Garlic Chicken. The Girlfriend ordered the Chicken Teriyaki Rice Bowl. She wanted the Ribs but at about 2,000 calories plus, that was a bit much even for her.

We also ordered Nui Nui Coconut Shrimp Skewers as an appetizer. They weren’t all that high in calories and with us splitting them that made it even better.

When they brought the shrimp skewers we quickly found out why they weren’t very high in calories. They were kind of scrawny. Taste wise they weren’t that exciting either. And the dipping sauce was just plain bland. You could hardly taste the coconut either which is probably another reason the calorie count was lows.

They also give you a glob of some vegetable crap with it. The Girlfriend didn’t like the looks of it. But I was game to give it a try, just enough to find out that like the dipping sauce it didn’t taste like much of anything. So I guess they liquefied them to make the sauce. As a matter of fact, the vegetables with this shrimp were so boring, they made the shrimp seem like a major feast by comparison. Maybe that’s the idea here. It didn’t work, but unlike everybody else in the place, we hadn’t down three jugs of liquor either

We had both ordered a side salad at four bucks each.  It was listed as having only 30 calories and we quickly find out why.  It was bad enough that for four dollars, there wasn’t much there, but they used those damn miniature round tomatoes that I absolutely abhor.  And for four bucks, if they  aren’t going to use real tomatoes, you would have thought they could have put more in the way of vegetables in it, like maybe some olives, cucumbers, mushrooms, or onions.  I mean, hell, the salads at Denny’s are better than this and only cost me $2.95.  Now I know another reason why it was so damn dark.  They didn’t want you to be able to see how skimpy some of the food items were.

It took us about a minute and a half to finish our crummy side salads and after what seemed like an eternity, and with the noise level now so bad that The Girlfriend and I were communicating by sign language, they brought our dinners.  I’ll leave you to guess which is which.

If you guessed that the top picture was the Lemon Garlic Chicken, and the bottom picture the Chicken Teriyaki Rice Bowl, you win!  Sorry, I don’t give out prizes.  This blog has made all of $30 bucks in 7 years.

My chicken is buried under that big gooey globby solidified lump of rice,  If you look closely  you can barely see it sticking out from under there, like it’s playing hide-n-go-seek.  As for The Girlfriend’s meal, the Teriyaki Bowl at Jack-in-the-Box was more appealing than the mess on her plate.

But we needn’t have worried.  The food didn’t taste bad.  It didn’t taste at all.  The girlfriend tried adding salt to her dish to give it some flavoring but it didn’t work too well.  She took a few bites then started placing the rest of the chicken on my plate.

My Lemon Chicken wasn’t any better.  It had absolutely no flavor either.  Worst was the rice mess.  You would have thought they would have at least added some kind of broth to give it flavoring.  The way it held together reminded me  of some kind of Caramel Popcorn Ball, or worse, those damn Quaker Rice Cakes you buy in the supermarket.  If you've ever dieted, you know which ones I mean.  However, that wasn’t it.  The rice was held together by it’s own bit of overcooked magic and a dash of Elmer’s Glue All.  And the vegetables with it were just like the salad, and just like the vegetables with the shrimp skewers.  Flavorless and unappetizing.  Helluva combination was this restaurant.  Yes, boring and noisy.

The Girlfriend asked me if I wanted her rice and vegetables.  I said no.  I didn’t really want mine that much but seeing as how I needed to eat something, I managed to forge ahead although I did leave quite a bit of it on my plate.  But I really didn’t dilly dally around.  Between the noise, the darkness, and the crummy food, I was ready to go.   So they brought the tab and here are the damages:

The price wouldn’t have been bad if the food had been exceptionally good.  We’ve eaten at Tahoe Joe’s and paid way  more than this.  The difference is that at Tahoe Joe’s, you get what you pay for which is good atmosphere, really good food, and really good service.  I can’t say the service was bad at Elephant Bar, but we got none of the other ingredients necessary for a good dining experience.   We only left the usual 15 per cent tip, probably because it was just a bad all around experience.  I think the problem is, a lot of people go there to drink booze and eating is almost secondary.  From the noise level, I would say that many of the patrons were already pretty well lit up and could care less what the food tasted like.  And if I had known about that, we would have gone elsewhere.  We probably should have done that anyway, but we figured the food would make up for the noise level.  It didn’t.

And normally, I don’t write this much about a meal.  But I guess the worse it is, the more there is to write about.  But I can tell you we won’t be going back to the Elephant Bar & Grill anytime soon.