Bad (Soup and) Salad

Saturday night we went out to dinner and a movie. Well, originally it was just supposed to be a movie, until we found out that the movie we wanted to see, No Country For Old Men, wasn't actually playing at time that Movies.com and Yahoo Movies told us it was. It's not very often that the Internet let me down, but it certainly did this time.

Luckily our babysitter was willing to stay until midnight instead of 10:00, so we decided we'd go see the movie in E-Town and grab some dinner first. We decided to walk down to Blue Bistro, a neighborhood spot which had replaced the late, lamented Jackie Blue. We had had a bad experience last fall (poor service, food took forever, wasn't hot when it arrived) but decided we'd give them another shot because we really, really want to like a restaurant that's walking distance from our house.

We had decided we'd go with simpler fare the second time around, so we sat at the bar and ordered a cheeseburger (me) and a steak salad & French onion soup (DJo). Things started off nicely -- the bartender was very friendly and poured us nice glasses of wine. After a little while DJo's soup came, which was very tasty until she discovered a big hunk of plastic in it.

We let the bartender know and he was properly apologetic. He took the soup away, told the kitchen to 86 the soup for the rest of the night, and comped our entire meal (which was more than we expected and was excellent customer service).

About a half-hour later, we started wondering where the rest of our food was. How long does it take to put together a burger and a steak salad, especially in a restaurant that isn't full? Ten minutes later the bartender looked over at the service counter and said, "is that my steak salad and burger there"? Apparently our order had come up and no one had told him. Bad kitchen service.

Then we got the food. My burger was a) lukewarm and b) rare. I ordered it medium-rare, but this was definitely not that. But, at least it was edible, which was more than can be said for DJo's steak salad, which was a) cool and b) mostly raw. Seriously, she was only able to eat able three bites of the steak, since the majority of it was just plain uncooked.

We considered our options. We'd already been comped, so it really wasn't worth complaining -- the food had taken so long that if we got replacement meals we would miss our movie. So, we just ate what we could and prepared to leave, figuring that someone would probably notice the raw beef that DJo left on the plate. As we were finishing up, we overheard the waitstaff chatting amongst themselves (which is one of the reasons I like to sit at the bar) -- basic "can you get me a bottle of wine" and "can you clean something up" type stuff. But then, after one server asked another to do something, I'm pretty sure I heard her say, "and can you polish the brass on the Titanic while you're at it?"

Geez. Does the staff feel like they're working on the Titanic? Do they feel like, no matter what they do, they're being handicapped by incompetent/uncaring kitchen and management staff? Two things are especially telling -- first, the problems we had were kitchen problems, just like the last time, which was five months ago. Second, the owner was in the restaurant and didn't come over to apologize. The staff, especially the bartender, did their job well (and we tipped him well, and based on what the bill actually would have been) but the problems the restaurant has may be more than they can fix.

That's our last trip to Blue Bistro; it's a shame that they didn't turn out to be the neighborhood place we wanted, like Jackie's was before its last few months. I guess it's back to Bayou -- our friends rave about it (though we had a bad food experience there as well) -- or else maybe hope that Blue Bistro actually hits the iceberg and is replaced by something else.

(The movie, by the way, was great. And we saw it in a theatre with only five other people, so no talking. Couldn't have been better.)