Saturday, March 10, 2012

Where is the Corned Beef?

We all remember O'Learys from the 80's, right.
The cool train car dining. The famous Beer Cheese soup.
Fantastic sandwiches, and ice cold beer..
It was an experience to eat there and was at one time, one of Danville's hot spots..
And then................ It moved. And it didn't take it's train car dining room with it. Nor did it take it's fun atmosphere, great service or good food.

Tonight, Scott and I went to O'Leary's with our friends Steven and Jamie.
And it was so bad, we couldn't help but laugh.

For starters we had to wait to be seated because the tables that didn't have people, had dirty dishes..
The hostess "we didn't expect to be busy". Well you'll know why by the time you're finished reading.

It was about 5 minutes before the waitress came to take our drink order..
Scott ordered a Miller light. Steven says he'll have one too. Scott says to him (in front of the waitress) "don't get draft, it's funky here". The waitress nods in agreement.. The last time we were there we had a waitress tell us that the Bud light draft also tasted funny.

So she brings our drinks and we ordered an appetizer. When she brought the appetizer another round of beer was ordered. They were delivered and all was good. She put the appetizer order in and came back for our meal order.
Steven a tenderloin, Jamie a patty melt, and me a Reuben.
Scott orders Italian beef - "We're out of Italian Beef".
Okay fine.. He'll take a French Dip with Swiss cheese.
Damn a restaurant that serves Italian food, French food, and Swiss food..
Multicultural dining.

and then we sat............................
For about 30 minutes.. Listened to the guy at the next table complain about his meal (that should have been our first red flag to leave).

We didn't see our waitress for that entire 30 minutes.

Finally the hostess walked by and Steven asked her about our appetizer.
Her reply went something like "blah blah blah, that table of 13 over there, blah blah blah".
Having been a waitress or many years, in a fine dining establishment, for a boss that was ALL ABOUT CUSTOMER SERVICE (thanks mom), it really gets my panties in a bunch to hear about how my service, meal quality, and over all dining experience, is effected by a table of more than 4 people that the restaurant was clearly unequipped to handle.
But anyway, she says she'll check.
She comes back and I swear this is what she said "your appetizers are up, your waitress will bring them".
WHAT???? Did you really take our complaint about not getting our food, walk past our food, look at our food, and come out and tell us someone else is going to bring it?
If you know the establishment has bitten off more than they can chew for the night, and your customers our complaining, grab the food on your way out to tell us it's ready..
Oh wait, that's beyond your job duties of stacking menus and rolling silverware.

So we get through our appetizer with no new issues.
Bring on the food... finally.

It's all looking pretty good.. The only thing that got left off was the Swiss cheese on Scott's French Dip.. She takes the sandwich back to have it added (if my mother was running that place, he probably would have gotten a completely new sandwich).
But she comes back to tell us they are "out of Swiss cheese"..
And again we hear "we were expecting this many people tonight" and she adds "we're short staffed".
I DON'T GIVE A RATS ASS... You do not run out of food when you are nestled between Walmart and County Market..
Finally he gets his sandwich back with provolone (not sure what country that's from).

I take a couple bites of my Reuben.. blah.
So I open my sandwich to take a peak. What do I find????????
BUDDING BEEF... Okay it was actually that step right above Budding Beef.. But it was definitely prepackaged, pressed LUNCH MEAT..
Everyone else tasted the slices of meat, and we are all pretty sure it was actually ham in disguise.
No corned beef at the Irish Restaurant that serves Italian, French, Swiss and Mexican foods.
It took two hours for me to get my 8 dollar Budding Ham sandwich.

We look around and realize we're the last of the evenings diners. We will finish our drinks and be gone.. and then it happens..
THEY START RUNNING THE VACUUM.. Another pet peeve.
That to me says - Get out, we want to go home..
But it didn't stop there..
THEY STARTED TURNING OFF THE LIGHTS...
Well get this O'Learys.. If that giant table of 15 people hadn't caused you to take 2 hours to serve 4 uncomplicated sandwiches, we would have been well on our way a long time ago..

Get it together O'Learys.. It won't take much more than a Dennys to wipe you out..

No comments: