Mood:
chillin'Now Playing: Danzig - Hammer of the Gods
Topic: Restaurant Reviews
So, lunchtime comes and every man must find something to dine upon or face the afternoon hungry, and hungry just will not do, so I made my way over to City Diner, a local diner style eatery featuring the classic foods one would expect from an establishment so named. Also a benefit is that it is located at 622 N. Water Street in downtown Corpus Christi, just a couple of blocks from my office, so it makes it all that much easier to just walk down there at lunch without having to hassle with getting the truck out of the parking garage and so forth. And convenience is certainly king around these parts with an hour to have lunch in. Sounds like a long time, but it can go by faster than one would expect and next thing you know lunch is coming back to the office in a doggy bag. It's not a huge deal since I could eat at my desk, but it's hardly as nice as sitting and having a leisurely lunch out and about.
The main reason I bring up lunchtime time constraints is about to become evident, but it is pretty much common knowledge to downtown establishments and eateries that these constraints do exist and it is important to get people seated and served as quickly as possible. Generally speaking, with a few exceptions, they downtown food service industry is very good at making lunchtime happen for all us paper pushers, so we can make a timely return to our afternoon paper pushing in a timely manner. Generally speaking.
I didn't realize it at the time, but I should have noticed the red flags that lunch was not going to be smooth as soon as I arrived at city diner a minute or two after noon. It wasn't particularly packed by downtown lunchtime standards. I've seen them much busier in the past, and that is really what makes today's experience there all the much more disappointing. The first tip off is that when I walked in, it wasn't all that busy, but the guy in line in front of me and I ended up waiting ten minutes to be seated. On top of this, the hostess apparently couldn't find enough menus for my party of two. Really? Not enough menus? You can't be serious. But they were indeed serious, and it didn't stop there.
What followed was a parade of errors by our waitress and some of the absolute worst service I have ever gotten and still paid for a meal. She was quick to take our drink order, but then disappeared for quite some time. Finally, she returned, took our appetizer order and meal order at the same time, because things were looking like they were going to be close time wise because of the poor service to that point. We ordered fried cheese sticks and the Southwestern Rolls as appetizers, and I had the special, a three cheese burger and my companion had the chicken strip meal which she not only had to order, but also tell the waitress it came with a salad, and then waited, and waited, and waited. Finally, my companion noticed the cook had brought out our cheese sticks to the waitress for delivery because they had been done, but she hadn't been back to check for them. Great. On top of it, between our table and the kitchen, she had forgotten that we also ordered the Southwestern Rolls, so those had not been made.
Finally, the Southwestern Rolls made their appearance only a minute prior to the meal proper arriving. At this point, enough of our time had been wasted that we were just happy to be able to eat some of our meal at the establishment rather than having to take it all back to work untouched, although my companion did end up taking a great deal of her meal with her in a doggy bag. Truth is, when the food did finally arrive, it was fine. The cheese sticks were competent if not spectacular, and the marinara dipping sauce was very good. Which reminds me of our other issue with the waitress. My companion ordered ranch dressing with the cheese sticks, which of course did not make it out with them. The waitress went back to the kitchen ostensibly to get the forgotten ranch, but some minutes later emerged from the kitchen, not only without ranch, but she wandered off to a different part of the diner to do whatever. Finally when she returned to our section, we asked for the ranch again, to which she rolled her eyes at us like we were troubling her and went off to the kitchen again to emerge several minutes later, finally with the requested ranch.
Overall though, the food was good. The three-cheese burger was tasty, although the bun was a tad stale and broke up quicker than I'd like. The rolls were good. I don't care overly much for the way the fries are battered, but that is personal preference more than anything, and the fries were golden and crispy. Didn't try the chicken strips, but my companion said that they were good and that the gravy was also tasty. I do like the Southwestern rolls as well, although they arrived contemporaneously with the meal instead of as an appetizer. Passed on the pie due to time constraints though.
In the final accounting, while I will be going back to City Diner because it is close to work and easy to get in and out of for lunch (usually), I will be hoping not to have a repeat of the service disaster that I was a part of this time around. The food was fine, but it's hard to enjoy lunch when the service that you receive, and pay for, is just that bad. It creates stress for people as they try to enjoy lunch and make it back on time for work, and due to their location and the type of food they serve, it should never be an issue.
