Disappointed and a bit of a rant...

Rob and I went to a restaurant Friday night to celebrate my new job.  It use to be (emphasis on "use to be") my favourite restaurant.  The last time we were there was about a year ago.  My husband's meal at that time was not good.  He usually orders the mussels in tomato sauce as an appetizer and he had so many dead ones and lots of broken shells in the sauce that he almost chipped a tooth on one.  As his main course, he ordered the special (which sounded really good). It was mixed seafood in a phyllo pastry.  Well, the seafood was so over cooked and it was way too salty.  He ate about half of the entree because he really hungry because we had to wait about 45 minutes for our meal, but that's all he could stomach.  He mentioned it to the owner's wife when we were leaving and the waitress was like "well, he ate half of it" thinking we were trying to get the meal for free.  We ate at that restaurant at least once a month and it seemed every time we went, the food quality dropped each time. For my husband, that was the last time he wanted to go.  On the flip side, I hadn't had a bad meal there at all. Up until Friday.  I'm so disappointed.  I loved the stuffed Calamari in champagne mustard sauce.  I loved it so much, that rather than order it in the appetizer size, I decided to get the full entree size this time.  Well, it was so over cooked, it was like trying to eat a rubber band.  And the sauce didn't have any mustard taste at all - and I highly doubt they used champagne in it too.  All I could taste was pepper.  The stuffing was originally made with ground chicken, pinenuts, and leeks.  There were hardly any pinenuts and no leeks at all.  As an appetizer I had the dolmades.  It had a sauce (I can't remember the name) that was a creamy lemon.  It was good.  But, my soup was a greek chicken & rice, which is usually a cream soup with lemon.  Well, it tasted like they used the sauce from the dolmades as the soup base and just threw in some chopped chicken and rice and watered it down a bit.  Rob ordered the mussels in tomato sauce again, and of course, he had a whole bunch of dead ones and 3 or 4 pieces of broken shell - AGAIN.  Even after we told the waitress what had happened the last time. His meal was ok (mousaka), but again, they changed the recipe and it wasn't as good as the original.

I understand trying to cut costs, but really, if it means that you're providing lesser quality, is that really what a restaurant wants to do.  I don't think this restaurant is going to last much longer. The clientelle was slowly building, and the time before last when we were there, they had a full house.  Friday night - not so much. They had three tables (including us) and 5 wait staff.  It irritates me a little, since we would talk to the owner's wife all the time when we were there and let her know that we weren't complaining and wanted to just give them some feedback so they could make it better and that we actually really liked the food for the most part.  Just seemed the last few times, all she had was excuses each time we mentioned something that was a little off. The only reason Rob agreed to go was because the first restaurant we went to had too long of a wait time to get a table and because I really liked the food at the greek place. Well, unfortunately, I didn't enjoy my meal this time and I won't be going back and they've lost a couple of patrons.

That's it for today.

Cat