Lunch Report: Bennigan's...

Years ago, I recall Bennigan's as being a leader in the Bar & Grill style chain restaurant, and you could always count on them as a good place to grab some food and a beer - in the same type of format as Chili's, Applebee's and TGI Friday's. I guess about two years ago or so, my wife had a series of bad experiences at the Bennigan's on Cinema Ridge near Ingram Park Mall, and aside from calling the manager as we drove to a competitor, to explain why he lost us as customers, we really had no need to ever call or set foot in the place again. Until this afternoon.I recently purchased one of those fund raiser Entertainment coupon books and figured, if anyone can get $20.00 worth of use in restaurant coupons, we could. So, Bennigan's got their long awaited, much anticipated, second chance from us and, I'm here to tell you, it wasn't bad at all.If you are familiar with this area, you know that right next door to the Bennigan's is Texas Road House. TRH is packed from the minute it opens until it closes, everyday, without exception. Benningan's on the other hand, was seriously empty. Fine by me.

My wife and I both ordered the Guinness Glazed Bacon Cheeseburger. They do serve up some huge burgers, but I have to be honest, I am usually leary of these specialty types of things. For eaxample, I think Applebee's has just totally gone overboard with all the wierd sauces and stuff they put on thier entire menu. At some poiint in time, you just want a burger with a little salt & pepper and some cheese, not all the extra syrup and such.So, we were both surprized when we got these bad boys and bit into them. I have long suspected that the burgers are simply microwaved or something, not actually grilled in the kitchen. Who knows? But however they were made, it turned out to be a pretty descent burger. My wife even started doing her little happy dance in the seat - thankfully no witnesses.

Other than it was good, the only remarkable thing about it was the Guinness Glaze. Good stuff on the burger, and especially good when used as dip for the fries.

The other really important point - and this may have had to do with the fact that aside for one or two folks in the bar, we were the only people in the restaraunt and we had awesome service. Not only did our server attend to our needs, several other people, presumably other servers or floor managers came by to ask how we were doing. Funny, had they done this a few years ago, they would have seen us back sooner.

You are officially free to end your own boycott and give Bennigan's a try.

Lunch Report: TGI Fridays...is not that good.

You may recall that my wife and I endured a bizarre dining experience at the TGIF's over on 151 and 410 a while back but I wasn't going to simply write it off as a potential dining place based on a single experience.

So today, a freind and I went out to lunch and he suggested Friday's. I had no issue with it and figured, what are the chances that something crazy could happen twice in a row?

I'll keep this short.

I must say that I regret not having my camera or even my cell phone with crappy camera attachment, because what I am about to describe deserves pictures. Remember that movie Office Space where the Jennifer Aniston character is in trouble for not wearing enough, oh what did they call it, Flair or something? Anyway, our waitress, a nice young lady was wearing some sort of weird railroad engineer cap like those popular in the 70's. Oh, is it all coming back into style now? I guess that explains her hoop earrings too. My bad. And there was another waitress wearing some sort of British "Andy Capp" hat, but in red plaid. WTF?

Okay, to the meat of the story. I order up the Tuscan Portabello Melt. According to the menu, it is " Sliced portobello mushrooms between layers of Provolone and Monterey Jack cheeses, roasted onion and tomatoes on grilled, buttery bread. Served with a cup of Fire-Roasted Red Pepper Soup. "

My friend ordered the Sizzlin' Chicken and Shrimp which is described thusly, " Sautéed garlic-marinated chicken breast with onions and peppers paired with zesty shrimp in a Roma tomato-basil salsa. All served over sizzling American and Mexican cheeses with a side of our signature mashed potatoes."

So just so you are aware, when they say that the chicken is served over sizzling American and Mexican cheeses..., they aren't kidding. His entree came on one of those cast iron plates you get fajitas on at Chili's, and the two kinds of cheeses were sizzled to the bottom of it. I mean, fried and stuck and no chance of getting it off. But, it certainly stayed hidden under the plank of chicken until my friend noticed that there was no cheese - not one kind or two - on top of his chicken, and went digging around for it. But, it was as described in the menu.

And what I got was also on the menu; it just wasn't what I ordered. Instead of getting the Portobello Mushrooms I really was eager to try, I got the Tuscan Chicken Melt which is the same thing as the Tuscan Portobello Melt, but with chicken and no mushrooms.

Of course, I did not know of the error when the nice lady brought out my lunch and asked me if everything was okay, because I had not bitten into it yet.

Don't get me wrong, the Tuscan Chicken Melt was great and I highly recommend it as long as you are willing to take a chance on being served the Tuscan Portobello Melt instead.

No, if you are asking if I sent it back, the answer is always no. If you send something back in a restaurant, you are asking for boogers in your food. Plain and simple, end of discussion. But when the girl finally did come back, I did ask her to check my ticket because I didn't want to be charged for the more expensive chicken when what I ordered was the mushrooms.

Good news, she tells me, we charged you what you ordered, not what you got. Thanks, and with no snot or other residue on the ticket, I'll even leave you a tip for being sure to clear that up.

Look, I hate to sound whiney, but can we please be a little more like the Red Robin over by The Rim? Hat's off (no pun intended) to all you TGI Friday's wait staff and your 37 items of flair, I know it is a tough job but the reason they give you a little pad of paper is so you can write down what people order.

Am I being unreasonable? Tell me about your dining misadventures.

Lunch Report: TGI Friday's

I'll make this very brief; The new TGI Friday's at 151 & 410 had acceptable food but bizarre service.

My wife and I had finished up our Sunday sightseeing and on the way back home made several false starts at places to eat. I had even considered the idea of - gasp - just eating something at home.

We drove by Henry's Puffy Tacos on Bandera & 410 even though neither of us wanted Mexican food, but since we had never been there and looking to try something new, we figured what the heck. But, they were closed. I don't know if they are closed on Sunday's or don't open until later or they are really, really closed. Who knows?

Next stop, Jason's Deli. But, my wife said instead of Jason's we should try McAllister's Deli over on 151 since neither of us have tried it. So, I get going to 151 and before we can pull into McAllister's, I see TGIF's and we go there instead.

Okay, to the point. I ordered up a Cobb Salad. In all honesty, I didn't know what a Cobb Salad was, but the last time I was with some co-workers at a TGIF in New Jersey, one of the guys ordered it and loved it.

So, our waitress was friendly and pleasant and such and other than the fact that they seated us between two families with screaming kids, everything was going rather well. I got my iced tea and my wife got some sort of frozen slushy drink and was very pleased to get one of those straws that bends. That is real value if you ask me.

Anyway, we sit there a little bit and before too long, a guy comes from the kitchen to deliver our order. My wife got a sandwich so there wasn't an immediate reaction by her that something was missing. And frankly, when he set down my Cobb Salad, I was immediately consumed at just how huge the portion was. He was gone before it hit me that we had never received any silverware or napkins for that matter.

I sat there for a minute or so and thought that I might get up to ask the hostess for some silverware but just then, our waitress made her way back. "So," she says, "how is everything? Can I get you anything else?"

I stared down at my untouched salad and looked up and said, "A fork?"

I don't know what I expected as a response but she answered with an "Oh? Okay." as if I was asking for something extraordinary. My wife quickly added in a request for some honey mustard and the waitress smiled and said, "sure".

I sat there for another minute or two and I was strating to get this really bizarre feeling like I was either on Candid Camera and Mr. Funt would pop out from one of the booths of screaming kids, or perhaps I was no kidding starting to feel some sort of transferred chemical reaction from having read Hunter S. Thompson's "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" (it has quite a bit of chemical abuse in the book). I mean, this had to be some sort of crazy Twilight Zone thing.

Finally, as my wife was a good third of the way through her sandwich (she was really hungry), our waitress came around as if she too had been reading Mr. Thompson's crazy account of a trip to Vegas, and casually handed me a fork. A single fork, no napkins, not a fork or anything for my wife; just a single fork.

Realizing that there would be no appearance by any TV crews to have me wave and smile, I stopped our waitress before she could move along and said, "I'm sorry. I guess there was a miscommunication. You see, we never received any forks or napkins or any other service items aside from a fancy bending straw, so really, I wasn't asking for just a single fork, I was hoping for the full compliment of utensils."

She leaned in and said, "Oh, there is a slight problem in the kitchen. We are out of forks and knives and things, but I'll get you some napkins."

I then held up my fork and asked her if this one had been washed or had she grabbed it from someone else's table. She got a nice chuckle from that and promised it was clean.

So, in the end, the food was good and in fact, I ate half of it and took the rest to work for lunch today.

I'll offer up my Tasty Treat status for the quality of the food, but you might want to give TGI Friday's at 151 and 410 another few weeks to have the rest of their silverware arrive. Either that or just order sandwiches.

How was your last visit to TGI Friday's? Tell me about it.

Adventures in Travel: Part 2

Once you have been in the military and had to share quarters with others, you pretty much get the idea why as humans, we evolved into families; so we could pick whom it was we had to share a home with. It isn’t pleasant to talk about but the truth is, we all have to use the restroom, we all have our odd sleeping habits which may include snoring or rocking or as I heard on a commercial recently, restless leg syndrome, so honestly, shouldn’t you like the people you have to house with?

This is why I got a big laugh about my arrival in Parsippany, NJ on Tuesday night.

We had several people from my company and many more customers all attending meetings so we all made an effort to make hotel arrangements in the same general area. Unless you were some sort of gold plated traveler like one of my bosses, the Courtyard was totally booked. A group of us ended up with reservations at a Fairfield by Marriott, which was close by. My group of four showed up at around 7:30PM to get our rooms, get something to eat then relax before an early start on Wednesday morning. Unfortunately, the manager of the Fairfield Inn had a slightly different game plan.

As soon as we arrived and before we could even present our beloved American Express Corporate Cards, the manager had an announcement to make: No rooms. But, there were arrangements made for us to get rooms, comp’d in fact, at the Days Inn down the street. While my co-workers groaned, I asked if they had High-Speed Internet. The answer was yes, and I was good to go.

I spent three months on a cot in a cargo container in the middle of Sarajevo with a constantly naked German guy as a roommate, so it is pretty tough to get me riled over a simple change in sleeping plans.

But… When we arrived at the Days Inn just down the street, we all looked at one another and then immediately started looking for the hidden camera and Alan Funt. Please don’t misunderstand; we aren’t snobs expecting a free night at The Palm, but seriously, one of the guys working the front desk, in his best Fruit of the Loom t-shirt, was most likely working on a transmission in the back office in between check-ins. Oh, and there would be no check in from this group.

Forget the looks of the place, but they wanted us to all share a room. Now, back to what I was saying about we as humans choosing who we want to live with… well, none of us felt the least bit offended when, as though we could have been a Barbershop Quartet with our near perfect timing of, “No.

So, back to the Fairfield and upon our entry through the automatic sliding door and past the baby grand in the lobby, we approached the front desk just as the night manager locked herself in the office. Seriously. So now the poor trainee had to give us the good news that they had suddenly found four individual rooms for us.
So, other than the fact that we still had to go and grab something to eat (I had the house Salad at TGI Friday’s, and it was pretty darn good) which meant I didn’t get in bed before midnight, it wasn’t that bad. I mean, really, it could have been a lot worse.

More on my trip to New Jersey tomorrow. If you have been on a trip recently, tell me about it.