Not The Ritz Hotel

My friend Heidi, you can find her at www.cranberryrelish.blogspot.com , reminded of a day few weeks ago when she wrote about her bad lunch this week. I was invited to a meeting in Coldbrook, Nova Scotia at the Wandelyn Inn. No fancy expectations and it was clean looking and tidy but sort of dated in style late 70's or early eighties. The plan was to eat lunch and then go to the meeting room. The guy that hosted the meeting I have known for years and he thought some of his sales guys could sell my product. The orders were taken, there was 10 of us I think. I went for the club on whole wheat because it's usually safe where ever you go. Everyone seemed to get something different but two got the hot roast beef sandwich. A couple people ordered the baked potato on the side and the waitress came out in a few minutes and said there was no baked potato yet, so they switched to mashed potato. A few minutes later she came out and said no mashed potato, so they went for fries, thank god they had fries. In that time a chipped glass was discovered and there was glass in the guy's tomato juice. The meals were served two at a time several minutes apart and the two with the hot roast beef sandwichs were served after most of us had finished. And that is where the first complaint came, it was just the sandwich served, they were told their veggies would be out shortly. The sandwich looked like leather with a cold gelatin type shiny dark brown gravy of some sort. At that point one guy got up and left his barely touched roast beef. We later found out he went to Wendy's across the street and then returned for the meeting. The waitress overheard some stuff at the table and got the cook to come out. He said the kitchen was having problems and almost everyone complains about the crappy prepackaged gravy they serve (not something I would think the hotel manager would want him to say). So he said he would make sure something was done on the bill. My club was fine, although it was on white and not whole wheat like I ordered, no biggy there. You can't send food back no matter where you are, it's too risky to offend the cook and have "things" done to your food. There is a great scene in the movie Road Trip when the geeky guy sends back the french toast because he didn't want powdered sugar on it. If you have seen it you know what I am talking about and would never think of sending food back. If you haven't see it, he didn't get new french toast and the method the cook used to remove the powdered sugar was the problem for me. By the way the club is not always safe. Brent (aka B.T. (Brent) Davis) went to Keystone Kelly's once and the club was made with canned flakes of Turkey. He wasn't happy but was smart enough not to send it back. Not that there is anything wrong with flakes of turkey but when you order a club in a restaurant you expect the real deal. If you want a quick economical meal stick with the Irving Big Stop and everything will be fine. The best and most expensive beef tenderloin steak I ever had was at Jon Allan's Steak House in Halifax and I hear they are as consistent as you can get (the picture is not actually Jon Allan's but gives you an idea of how it looked). Carly is also right about the toasted chicken caesar wrap at Rogue's Roost, it's the same every time, delicious, and they are a micro brewery to boot.