Pancakes.... or not...

Okay, I normally don't use my blog to vent, but this time... I couldn't resist. I will not be using the name of the restaurant, or the town it was in (because it was a very small town).

So today I went out to brunch with my family. My parents, siblings, and I live about an hour and a half away from where my aunt, uncle, and cousins live, so it was a long drive for brunch. I had an Eggo waffle before we left, but by the time we got there for our 12:30pm reservation I was definitely hungry.

We got seated quickly, but it took awhile for us to get menus. Argh. First the waitress came around and asked for our drink orders; I ordered orange juice (which was supposedly fresh-squeezed). That came a few minutes later, and it was bitter. I don't mean "it wasn't sugary sweet", I mean it tasted like there was either grapefruit juice or something mixed into it, or the oranges or juice had gone bad. Gross. My brother and I tried to explain the situation to our waitress and another woman who I think was the "bartender" or something, and they didn't seem to understand it for whatever reason. Eventually we ended up getting some good orange juice, but it definitely wasn't fresh-squeezed, it was Tropicana or something (which is fine by me, really).

So we got to ordering our food. I ordered pancakes, with nothing in them (they offered both fruit and bacon pancakes), and asked for some maple syrup and butter on the side. First, the food was taking awhile to get to our table, so they sent us some cheese and bread. That was okay, since I wanted my pancakes, but I mean I like cheese so that was fine.

Eventually our food came. I spread some butter on one of the pancakes, and poured the syrup on it. The pancakes were room temperature, and the syrup was cold, which combined to make the pancakes cold. So I explained very nicely to the waiter that the pancakes were cold and asked if she could please heat them up and could I please get some syrup that was warm too. She said okay, and took my plate back to the kitchen. We spoke with another waiter, who might've been the host or something, I don't really know, and he said that heated-up pancakes aren't good, so they'd just make a new batch.

Okay. Whatever. I didn't need a whole new batch of pancakes, but that's fine. Eventually they bring me back the "new pancakes", I take a look and see that they've taken the same pancakes and rearranged them and put them on a different plate- I can tell because I'd taken a bite out of one of them. No big deal, whatever. So I pour some more syrup on and cut a bite out of the pancake, guess what there's a piece of something pink/white/red and greasy, a.k.a. bacon,  in it. I haven't eaten red meat (by which I include pork) since May 2005 (over 5 and a half years) and I've been completely vegetarian since October 2006 (over 4 years). I didn't eat it, thankfully, but needless to say the presence of the bacon disturbed me.

We explained the situation to the waitress, who apologized and said they'd bring me some new pancakes. My brother and older cousin, not wanting the bacon pancakes to go to waste, ended up eating them anyway. They've both already finished their food- my brother had corned beef hash and I think my cousin has the same thing- and most other people are about half finished.

So eventually they sent me another stack of pancakes. There were four this time, not three. I knew I probably wouldn't eat four whole pancakes, but whatever. I put some butter and syrup (which, thankfully, was warm) on the pancake, and took a bite. Yum. These were good pancakes. But I took another bite and then saw that the middle of the pancakes were COMPLETELY uncooked... like totally liquid. I am not kidding. It was unbelievable. I'm pretty hungry by this point, considering it's about 2 o'clock. We talk to the waitress, I tell her that I'm sorry to keep sending the stuff back but I don't want to eat a raw pancake. She said they'd send out some more pancakes. I thanked her, but I was pretty frustrated. Everyone else had pretty much finished their food by that point.

The manager eventually came over to me and apologized and asked if I maybe wanted something else to eat. I appreciated that, since by that point who KNOWS what else they could mess up about the pancakes... ugh... I told her that I'd like the french toast, please, and thanked her. A few minutes later (by this point every other person at the table was done eating; it was like 2:30 or something ridiculous) THE CHEF finally brought out my french toast. The french toast had some berry jam on it, I didn't really want that but was sick and tired of dealing with everything so I just scraped it off.

Yeah, that pretty much SUCKED. It's a pretty nice restaurant. I've never been there before, but my aunt and parents have, and they've all had good experiences there. No one else had any problems with their food. I was kinda pissed that I got the short end of the stick.

My aunt and uncle spoke with the manager, and she said they were completely mortified by what happened... frankly, they should be, because I know some things are out of there control (the bacon thing is almost understandable, and it's happened to me before) but really is it that hard to (1) properly cook pancakes (my 12-year-old sister can do it) and (2) send things out on time? It was a pretty small place, but I guess either they were really busy or were understaffed (my grandma's boyfriend kept going on about how the chef must've left, or something, because of how slow it was), because it took FOREVER for me to get my pancakes and then the french toast.

At the beginning of this, I was deciding between ordering the pancakes and the french toast, but ended up going with the pancakes... of course now I'm kicking myself for not having ordered the french toast.