Archive for the ‘ATL Restaurant Reviews’ Category

I am always looking for ways people can start a business with food and since moving to the Atlanta area I noticed there are a number of fabulous restaurants, cooking schools, museums, places to go and people to see. The one thing that is missing in this town and probably many others is “food focused walking tours.”

Look, I know this would be a seasonal thing in some parts of the country, but here in the ATL someone should have thought about this ages ago. As a transplant, I would love to go on a culinary tour of the south, visit the different neighborhoods that make up ATL, and dine at the various restaurants. It would be great just to take a tour of the DeKalb Farmers Market and learn about the various foods they sell…the tasting alone is a grand experience.

I know this will involve a lot of planning and coordination, organization and superior customer service skills, but, so what. Are there folks out there doing the culinary tour thing? Yes. I went on a wonderful tour a few years back in New Orleans and there is a company in North Carolina that has jumped on the band wagon. This is just something to think about, and if you start a “Food focused walking tour” in your city, please email me so I can come and check it out.

I have been living in North Carolina for almost three years and I still can’t find a restaurant that provides consistently good food. I know this is an issue everywhere, but for those restaurant owners in the Raleigh/Durham area, they don’t realize that the worse sin you can commit is to prepare consistently bad food and pawn it off as good or even fairly decent. I don’t eat out a lot, but when I do, I want good food. I know there are a lot of issues that restaurant owners have to deal with today and many will say, “It’s not my fault, I’m doing the best I can. The reason we have lousy food is because:”

No one properly trained the kitchen staff
There are no really good chefs out there
The kitchen staff does not speak English
The kitchen staff cannot read
The kitchen staff cannot follow directions
The kitchen staff cannot cook
The kitchen staff lied about their culinary experience
The kitchen staff won’t come to work
The kitchen staff doesn’t care
The kitchen staff is lazy
or
I know I’m the owner but I don’t care about serving tasteless food
I know I’m the owner but I don’t care about serving food that is old
I know I’m the owner but I don’t care about serving bread that is stale
I know I’m the owner but I don’t care about the quality of the meat being served
I know I’m the owner but I bought this restaurant from someone else and they always did it this way
I know I’m the owner but I have too much on my plate and I just can’t worry about that
I know I’m one of the owners, but this is not my responsibility, the other owner handles this, I just keep the books

Look, this is the way it works, as the owner of an eating establishment you are responsible for the quality of the food you serve. If you don’t care about the food you service close your establishment or your customers will close it for you!

Hello people!!! It is 2008 and I wish diners would stop patronizing fooderies that pass off “nasty food” as delicious culinary works of art. It just ain’t so!

At what point do we grow some backbone and say “Hell No We Won’t Go” and exercise our options, our culinary dollars and sense. Your restaurant does not have to have a menu containing 120 items, everyone is not a Coney Island. If you have five or six entrees that are “consistently exceptional” you will have people lined up out the door, I promise.

When I first came to Cary, North Carolina my daughter and I would purchase a Philly Cheese Steak sandwich, hummus and grape leaves from this little Mediterranean Restaurant across the street from where we lived. It has since gone out of business and it really should not have. The restaurant would be open today if the owner took pride in what he was selling; unfortunately he did just enough to get by. The little place had a huge problem with “inconsistency.” One day the food was great, the next day it was lousy. Some days the hummus had garlic and lemon juice, other days it had nothing. Look if you can’t seem to get your recipes straight (and you’re the only one cooking) close your restaurant and become a used car salesman. I guess that’s what he did.

I know we are in a recession/depression and food prices are soaring, but if you want to remain open and keep customers coming through your doors, pay attention to the quality of your food. I honestly think, and this is my opinion and my blog, so don’t get upset, not that I would care; but I honestly think that food in the south sucks, there I said it. What people in the south are pawning off as good food is a travesty. Oh, there is an exception, the food in New Orleans, Louisiana (pre-Katrina) had a tendency to be pretty good, but it really depended on where you ate.

I even went to a “Ruth Chris” the other night and my daughter’s filet mignon was overcooked, the creamed spinach was undercooked and the mashed potatoes were made from a box. I could have screamed!

I am going to push for a revolt against all restaurants that attempt to force us to eat their nasty, flavorless food.

From this day forward I would like all who read this blog to get up and walk out of any restaurant that attempts to serve you bad food. Leave behind a ticket that says, “Serving Bad Food Will Put You Out of Business.” The CWD (Cooking with Denay) Bad Food Police. We certainly can’t put these restaurant owners in jail, but we can ticket them!

Honestly, I would rather have three or four superior restaurants to choose from than three or four hundred lousy ones.

If you know of any really great restaurants in the Raleigh/Durham area please send their names and addresses to me so I can check them out and put them on the CWD (Cooking with Denay’s) Super Fantastic Restaurant List.

Good food is just hard to come by today!!!! …but it shouldn’t be…

I recently went to breakfast with my daughter at local restaurant chain in the Durham area and the experience was “sad” to say the least. The waitress who looked a bit retarded, no disrespect toward the handicap, but if you have mental health issues, working with the public should not be one of your primary job selections…oooops, did I say that?????

Well, anyway, she brought us watered down coffee, (I know, not her fault since she probably did not make the coffee) something we both detest and although my daughters food included all items mentioned in the menu, mine did not. I asked for wheat toast instead of biscuits and I thought I was supposed to get hash browns, however that could be a mistake on my part. The interesting thing is that she never, ever brought my wheat toast. Nope, not ever! She didn’t even come back to check on us to see if everything was alright. Damn!

I did not complain because, she has been there since we started going to the place (a couple years) and it is highly unlikely in the day of “not being able to find talented, intelligent, resourceful, articulate, responsible wage slaves” that the restaurant would every reprimand her or acknowledge my complaint.

I will simply not return, never, ever to that restaurant. I say this to restaurant owners and managers:

If you are not doing good business, check 7 things:

1. Check your food. Sit down and eat at your own restaurant. If you think it’s nasty, so do your customers.
2. Have your family and the friends you trust check your food. Have them sit down and eat at your restaurant. If someone thinks something is nasty, so do your customers.
3. Stop using dirty mop heads to clean your floors. The sour smell will always, always, always overshadow the sweet and savory aroma of your cuisine. Customer’s will think your food is nasty and not return. If your nose does not work, ask one of your customer’s how the restaurant smells. Look this is 2008 and times are going to get bad, really bad, before they get better, just ask your customer’s their true opinion; preferably customer’s who are not repeat offenders, they have probably become immune to the smell.
4. Take food orders yourself. Taking orders yourself will let you know how easy or difficult it is for your wait staff. If it is easy as pie and your wait staff is having difficulty you will either need to re-train or higher individuals with higher intellect…that may also mean paying more. Remember, it’s 2008 and today you truly get what you pay for…you pay nothing well you know the rest.
5. Give your wait staff their tips every night. No really, people who know they are going to get money on a daily basis sometimes see that as an incentive. Put a beautifully framed tip chart in each restroom by the paper towel holder. People often use the restroom before leaving a restaurant and this is a pleasant way to remind them to tip. Make it fancy, in calligraphy if possible. DISCLAIMER: If your restrooms are nasty and filthy this will not work and your customers will leave and never come back!
6. Model great behavior. If you are the kind of restaurant owner or restaurant manager who is never there or who just has a shitty attitude your staff will pick up on it and mimic the same behavior. You know the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree and birds of a feather. If you go to a restaurant and the folks act like they just don’t care…darlin’ they don’t…get up and leave and never go back. The best way to send a message that you, the customer will no longer tolerate bad, disrespectful, incompetent service and nasty food is to just “NOT ENGAGE.”
7. It’s called food service for a reason. The two words go together for a reason people! The entire restaurant experience really involves two things “FOOD and SERVICE.” The two are not one or the other, they are joined at the hip, neck, back, leg, thigh whatever, like Siamese twins. You cannot have a good restaurant experience without good food and good service, an issue with either can completely ruin not only the experience but the customer’s whole day.

I would rather have only ten great restaurants to choose from than one thousand lousy restaurants trying to be great. The next time you get bad food and/or bad service; don’t return, let the restaurant owner figure it out, improve or close. Then we will all be closer to a really great “DIVINE DINE.”