August 01, 2004

• Chowhound is an independent, well read web forum for foodies. You might even find people there who had the same experience. You could also lambast them on Citysearch, but I don't know anyone who takes their user reviews seriously. If the food is that crappy though, I can't imagine they will stay in business much longer...
• I tracked down a thread on it @ Chowhound.
• Does anyone know of a website that I can post to where folks will actually read and care... Seems like a indirect snark...
• Ow, that first line should have been in italics.
• Chowhound looks good but they seriously need phpBB (or anything post-1996) running their forum.
• Citysearch for Los Angeles has a review function, and there are already lots negative reviews for The Pig.(scroll down to member reveiws). Whenever I am going to a new place or a curious about a reccomendation, I usually check it out on Citysearch because the site is extremely comprehensive and there is generally a good bit of feedback left by real customers.
• eGullet is Chowhound, but with a slightly more discriminating tenor and more site eye candy.
• Sorry to hear about your experience, squidranch. I just assume that there is at least a 50% chance that any new restaurant experience, no matter what the price range, will be spoiled (for me anyway) by one of more of the following: unimaginative/predictable menu; bad service/long waits; overbearing/tip-gouging/ignorant wait staff (almost inevitable); an inability to deliver either everyone's food together or to deliver the components of my meal together; poor presentation; canned deserts and bad coffee (bad espressos!); and so on. There seems (at least in Boulder CO) an idea that you can give a place a fancy name, a fancy interior, jack prices up and everybody will assume it's okay; this seems particularly true for 'bistro' type places. You can be incompetent as heck at actually running a restaurant, but as long as it looks like a restaurant, that seems to be enough. But I guess I'm just fussy. Anyway I cope by revisiting restaurants I like and ignoring others and persuading my friends to do the same. I think a lot of people use restaurants funtionally, to grab a meal, and not for the experience. And really, once you've ordered the meal and ate it, if it was crap, it's still a done deal and the restaurant has your money and there's little you can do apart from not go there again. This seems to be nothing to do with how much they charge; a good diner is just as likely as a bad high-end place ...
• Nah, it wasn't a snark at MoFi. That's why I posted my question here. The thing is that I have certain expetations about a meal. If I order a plate of BBQ, I don't expect sushi sized portions. This place served me something that you would expect of an airline meal. As a matter of fact, if I got it on an airline I would have been quite pleased, but when you sell yourself as a genuine BBQ house, you can't just get by with neon signs and a cool juke box. This is the TGIF school of restaurant, i.e. "put some cool stuff on the wall to distract them from the crappy industrial food". There used to be a great BBQ place in of all places West LA on Santa Monica Blvd near Bundy. It was called Dem Bones and it was good. Large portions of rich, meaty ribs, just slighly dry and chewy on the tips and moist and juicy inside. If this place was at least halfway as good as Dem Bones, I would have happily eaten my meal and shut up...
• Try Leo's Barbecue at Adams and Crenshaw. I'm from Texas, and this was the best barbecue I've had in LA by far.
• I notice that people will flock in droves to a place, no matter how bad the food or how bad the service, as long as it's in a trendy area and has a trendy or corporatized image.
• And this one has the exact image and local of which you speak, rollypolly. A pseudo Memphis neon look, just off Melrose. If they spent half as much effort on the food as they do on the marketing of the place, it would be great. It's a shame because I would love to have a BBQ place close to me that was halfway decent. And thanks for the reccomendation kamikazegopher. I'll give them a shot.
• PS - I visted the reccomended sites (chowhound, EGullet and CitySearch) and let off some steam by writing nasty reviews. This topic begs another Curious George question; "What is your favorite hole in the wall, greasy spoon in your home town?" I just might post it.
• Not that this has anything to do with squidranch's experience, but damn, the other day I had an amazing experience at a restaurant. It's Henry's in Portland, downtown in the old Henry's Brewery. The place just opened and I decided to go down and check it out. Not only was the decor the coolest I've ever seen, the food great and reasonably priced, but damn, the wait staff was incredible. They had dudes with headsets directing all traffic, all the employees wirelessly linked or something, to the effect that we were actually served by six different members of the waitstaff completely seamlessly. For example, a waiter walked by, I asked for more water, and within 15 seconds a different waiter was at our table refilling our glasses. I'm currently installing a POS for a restaurant and I know how complex handling a large waitstaff is, but this just fucking floored me. These guys were so fast, so on point, and worked so seamlessly together it was like watching a dance. ...I just felt like sharing that. Not to give some rave review to this restaurant, but because it was so cool to see that level of coordination (:
• Get even. Call and find out the General managers name. Write a detailed letter to said restaurant. Be civil. Expalin every problem in detail. Sound like you want to return. Any corporate restaurant will respond to you. Receive gift certificate from restaurant. Sell gift certificate on Craigslist in your town.
• The best, most effective way to register your ire is to never patronize them again. Beyond that, unless you're a restaurant critic by trade, the best you can usually hope for is to influence your friends and acquaintances away from it.