Thursday, December 6, 2012

Rothwell's, London Ohio

After mixed reviews of this place from people around town, I decided to take my mother and try this place tonight. I heard it was rather pricey, especially for the area. Researching the menu online, it was no more expensive than Red Lobster or Ruby Tuesdays.

Upon entering, I was rather confused if the woman by the door was the hostess or a customer waiting on someone. (Seeing as how there was no hostess stand and she was wearing a jacket) The hostess stand is a wall table, by the men's restroom. We walked along a high wall to the main dining area. The bar is mostly closed off, which gives the impression of seclusion from the rest of the dining room. The tables are covered with white linen and....butcher paper. I see the idea for this, not having to spend so much money on the cleaning service, but I don't know if this works for the classy feeling they are trying to project. I had the impression that they are going for five star family restaurant, which is incohesive combined.

The menu had a wide variety of items, a long way from the eight they first started with, said one customer. The server did, what I always believe is the ultimate sin for a sever. While standing there, waiting for us to order, mom was making last minute decisions and she said that she could come back because she has another table she needs to get drinks for. As soon as I heard that, I didn't like her. That is one of the worst things to say to a customer. "Its ok, I have more important people than you to take care of" is always what goes through my head whenever a server mentions they have other people waiting for them.

I was really offended that our less than patient server gave us burnt cornbread. Yes, burnt. The bottoms were almost completely black. Of course this made it completely dry as well. It was extremely yellow and at first I thought it was some kind of lemon cake. I don't care who you are, how lazy you are, or ineptly ridiculous you might be, never, ever, ever serve anything burnt, especially to me.

 We both got the daily special: pulled pork on texas toast with red skin mashed potatoes and onion rings. The pork was unbelievably salty. It tasted like it sat in cooking liquid for hours while it reduced into a salt lick. I had to stop eating it because it was hurting my mouth having that much sodium and the flavorful gravy just made it worse. It made the texas toast extremely soggy. The potatoes were rich and delightful. The small amount of gravy on them gave them a little boost of flavor. The onion rings tasted beer battered and were crispy and light. I am still debating on weather of not they are homemade or frozen. For dessert I got the chocolate lava cake a la mode. Now I don't believe these people know what a lava cake really is. When you cut into it, its supposed to be flowy, gooey, oozy. But instead, there was just melted little pieces of chocolate and it was too moist to hold up the ice cream and started to collapse and get soggy. It needed to be much denser.

The staff acted really odd in general. It was like a bunch of little school kids afraid to come over and just kept pushing each other saying "You go!". They were aloof and stayed in the kitchen as much as possible. I know the place I work, all the servers are always talking to everyone. Each other, customers, even themselves (haha) but these acted robotic.

Overall I give them 3 stars. I wouldn't really want to go back unless maybe someone else was paying for it.

No comments:

Post a Comment