Friday, December 28, 2007

A Grand Disappointment

Last night the girls and I dined at the Grand Lux Cafe. A chain restaurant owned by the Cheesecake Factory folks, the interior reminded me of a restaurant in New Orleans, The Palace Cafe. Except everything here is faux. Floors made to 'look' like marble, fake Nouveau statues, awful light fixtures and stencils, 'wrought iron' furniture that looks like it came from Eurway and was reupholstered with a brothel's leftover fabric swatches, I can see how some people may be impressed with this colossus, but not me. Not even with the lights so low I could hardly read the menu.
The service was awful. We had this 17 year old nitwit who actually walked away from our table to go bus tub dive in sight (that's where someone eats untouched food from a plate cleared from a table and its not that uncommon but should not be done in sight of the diners). She messed up our order and was inappropriately informal in communicating with us. So what, no big deal, service can be hit or miss anywhere. As for the food, another miss. Unimaginative and incongruent with the settings, at least there were fewer selections than the Cheesecake Factory tome they call a menu. I had a mushy Mushroom burger that had very little taste. Our salads came out swimming in dressing. We ordered the specialty deserts that require 30 minutes to prepare. I got the pineapple upside down cake. Okay, don't kid yourself people. If the two little cakes that came out on my plate had been in even a slow oven for 30 minutes they would have been burnt to a crisp. I do not believe for a second that these were truly baked from scratch when I ordered them. And they didn't even come with ice cream, as the menu promised. So I just got two rounds of candied pineapple with a kinda dry cakey mound underneath. Tasty enough, but overall disappointing and for $22 for an entree and dessert (water only and with tip, and I got a lesser priced menu item) utterly not worth it. My advice, go across the street to Grotto for much better food in the same price range.
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