I feel insulted – insulted that I am sitting here writing this instead of doing any of a bunch of things that I really should be doing right now. The shock I had at dinner compels me to share the experience, so here it is. Am I being altruistic or just plain angry? You decide.
I had dinner at the Windward Mall franchise of I Love Country Café. In ages past, I remember going to other franchises of this local chain for wholesome and healthy, albeit expensive (think current Zippy’s prices over 8-years ago), fare. Root will surely remember going there with Vern after evening bike rides from when the first one opened on Pi’ikoi. Breakfast was always at the Kahala one after the Honolulu Marathon Escort duty until that part of the mall disappeared to make way for some mainland store. Of all the places in the Windward Mall food court, this looked like a good place, so I stepped up to the plate. With good past experiences and name recognition – what could possibly go wrong? Read on…
Menu? There were several dry-erase boards with “specials” listed. Since it didn’t look like anything had been erased and rewritten in a while, the “specials” probably were really just “regular” menu items. There were a few acrylic picture frames with additional computer printed 8-1/2 x 11 “special” menus also. Up high behind the register were a bunch of pictures of what I assumed to be the “regular” menu, since all the dry-erase boards and printouts said “special”. None of the “regular” items were priced. Approaching the register to order, I was confronted with a service staff whose best suit in school definitely wasn’t the English language. Don’t get me wrong – I’ve had excellent service in many a place home or abroad where English isn’t even spoken, no less understood. Language wasn’t the problem: At issue here was more a situation where the workers didn’t really care about customer service, and frankly didn’t seem to even want to be at work – they just wanted to occupy space for their shift and collect the paycheck on payday.
“Hello Sir, what can I get for you today?” (okay, it probably wasn’t that polite, and definitely wasn’t that coherent and understandable)
“Do you have the lasagna today?” I’ve run into places not having things available before, so I just thought I’d ask instead of getting denied.
“Yes.”
“I’ll get that, please.”
“Which one?” Okay, all I saw on the menu was the “Portabello Lasagna”, so I am confused. “Which one? There’s more than one kind?”
“[mumble, mumble, mumble],” the cashier has turned away from me, so I can’t make out what he’s saying.
“Excuse me?”
“[Mumble, mumble, mumble],” he’s talking down toward the countertop this time.
“Excuse me?”
“Portabello or meat?”
“Oh,” I quickly scan the various haphazard array of menus and can only see the portabello one listed anywhere. Whatever. “…portabello.”
“Regular or mini?”
There is regular or mini? Where is this on the menu? It is nowhere to be seen. Whatever. “Regular”
I got rung up for $5.99 USD for the food, plus a $3.00 USD upcharge from mini to regular – that’s $9.41 USD after taxes! WTF?! That’s pricy for a plate lunch! Whatever – let’s just roll with it. I gave him the cash, and he gave me the change. He called it out to the kitchen and they started preparing it. He asked what kind of dressing I wanted. I asked about the choices and he pointed out a printed sheet in front of the register. This was better than trying to decipher his mumbling, so I was actually a bit thankful. I chose the low-fat buttermilk ranch. I could see them working on my food intermittently. The cook popped out of the kitchen at one point with the two lasagna chubs in a oven-safe ceramic oval dish and put marinara and some cheese on it from the storefront hot case. Okay, that meant the lasagna was pre-made in serving-size burrito-like rolls instead of layered-up in pans the traditional way. The heating plate indicated it was refrigerated or frozen. As I waited, I could imagine the dish going thru the microwave to thaw, then going into a salamander to melt the cheese. Some time later, the lasagna appeared in a foam take-out tray and was finished with salad greens and a small block of garlic bread. I took my food and found somewhere to sit in the crowded seating area. The seating area wasn’t really filthy, but the tables were unnaturally narrow and the seats were flimsy and bent, but that is an issue unto itself.
The salad greens were very nice and fresh. About half of it was iceberg lettuce, so nothing really fancy. The julienned carrots on top weren’t all dried out and white. The dressing was served in a separate little cup, so the end-user could apply as much or little as desired – a nice touch. The dressing was good. I’d have given the salad a B+ until I neared the halfway point and found that the greens, although fresh-looking, were soggy wet. Apparently they kept the greens wet to prevent them from wilting and turning brown, but no effort was made to drain them before plating. The dressing and fluid turned the last bit of salad into a watery, dilute mess. I had to take the last salad bits, shake off the water, and dip them in the remaining salad dressing. The salad therefore gets a C-
On to the main course! At this point, I had to cut the lid off the foam tray so the plate could fit on the narrow table without the lid going into the food of the person sitting opposite me. The bent chairs were unnaturally low, so it was also a bit difficult trying to cut the lasagna and use a fork on it with the plate being essentially at chest level. Try and remember what it was like being a toddler without a booster seat. The tables also had large round iron bases (bigger in diameter than the tabletop was wide!) that made it impossible to slide the chairs close to the table, adding to the awkward eating position. As the plastic knife met the firm noodles, a clear fluid issued forth from the lasagna chub and diluted the already-thin marinara sauce. WTF?! Can you say “product previously frozen”? I continued cutting and got a good chunk with all the layers – pasta, portabello mushroom, and ricotta cheese. On first bite, all the bits were firm – that’s good. The mushrooms were very good quality and weren’t all spongy and crumbly despite apparently being kept frozen. The taste, however, was sickly sweet. WTF?! The marinara was dessert-sweet! It was also oregano-heavy and basil-bereft. If you’ve ever seen that infomercial where Ron Popeil accidentally dumps half a bottle of oregano into some marinara sauce he is cooking and the co-host goes on about how wonderful it is, you know what I’m talking about here. People who don’t know how to make marinara shouldn’t make marinara! Really! In actuality, it tasted more like Russian dressing and had a similar consistency. The more pieces of the lasagna I cut, the more fluid squirted out, and the more dilute the sauce became, eventually becoming unable to “stick” to the lasagna. Also, the blackish mushroom spores began clouding the red marinara juice to a sick brown toward the end. In retrospect, I realize that the pasta may not have been firm from proper preparation, but from being desiccated from freezing. The lasagna itself gets a D. The marinara gets an F.
At this point I was not very happy. If it wasn’t something I paid that much for, it would have ended up in the dumpster already. This was of course a false sense of economy – why suffer through eating something terrible even if it cost a lot? It wasn’t poison though, but I was thinking I’d rather get gastroenteritis from something like this rather than from something I really like (like Chiang Mai). The last thing left was the garlic bread. Initially, I felt a little ripped-off since it was tiny (about 5cm x 8cm), but after I picked it up and discovered it’s density, I wondered if I could even manage to finish it. It was heavy, but not doughy. The garlic flavor was adequate to allow it to be identifiable as garlic bread, but “butter-saturated bread” would have been a more accurate (although less appetizing) description. The bread gets a C-.
I feel a little hesitant about panning the food, considering the good experiences I have had at other franchises in the past, but it was really bad this time. It was a good example of taking very good raw ingredients (salad greens, mushrooms, bread) and through honest, misguided effort turning them into something revoltingly vile. I really tried to like it, but in the end, I found it impossible. The random mystery menu, lack of a displayed pricing policy, and the indifferent staff added to the unsatisfactory customer experience. I won’t be going back. I really wish I could have just “ CTRL+Z”-ed my dinner and just stayed home and had an orange or something…
This has to be one of the worst $10 USD I’ve ever wasted on food.
Not recommended
One-half out of four grinning monkeys (it would have gotten a zero if it weren’t for the fact that the ingredients were of high quality).
Really, if you happen to be trapped at Windward Mall for a meal, stay out of the food court and just go to IHOP and get some pancakes. I guess you could try your luck at Ruby Tuesday if you don’t look “local”, but the food quality varies hourly, and the customer disservice is second to none.
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