FeedRagging on Restaurants
September 28, 2007 in Section 2
Peoria Illinosian and Bill Dennis have ranted, lately, on restaurants in which they have recently had a bad experience. I guess it is my turn.
The wife and I found ourselves without children for almost two hours during a recent evening and decided to try Paddy O’Flaherty’s in Morton for a dinner out that didn’t involve carrying a plastic tray to our table or reading the menu off a board behind the cash register.
We were seated almost immediately and our drink & appetizer order was taken - water for me, a fancy beer for the young lady, and an order of Onion Rings. We began to peruse the menu and the waitress returned with two beers and turned to go almost before we could catch her. “Uhm, I just wanted water.” So she took one of the beers and she eventually returned with a nice glass of water with a lemon for me. The half-dozen or eight large onion rings arrived soon thereafter. These were big, beautiful, think rings that looked delicious.
I was having trouble deciding what to order, so we waived off the waitress and I kept perusing the menu. Of course, with a name like Paddy O’Flaherty’s the Irish theme abounds. The problem is that they overdo it on the menu. EVERYTHING has an Irish-sounding name. I expect a little bit of that, but to call the Onion Rings “O’Morton Onion Rings” is just plain silly. About then, I noticed that there were some Irish ‘proverbs’ at the bottom of the page. The first one I run across is “The deaf are the source of all lies.” (I believe that was it, but it might have been put slightly differently.) I wear hearing aids and my father is deaf. I was immediately put off my feed. I can take a joke, I am not overly sensitive, but I just didn’t see the proverbial lesson, the humor, or any other purpose to this comment. In fact, I found many of the other ‘proverbs’ and ‘jokes’ insulting to my Irish side, as well. It was just stupid, and served no real useful purpose.
Anyway, I ended up choosing a burger just to quit holding up the ordering process. My wife ordered a salad. We sat and talked, which was nice. We talked a lot - she a bit more than me - but when I looked at my cell phone to check the time (we had to pick the kids up at a specified time) I could believe that it had been 45 minutes since we ordered. It was another ten before the food arrived - and this kills me - still a bit longer before we had silverware and napkins.
As for the food, I thought the burger was dry, the ‘pretzel bun’ was extremely hard to chew, and the ’seasoned’ fries tasted as if they were made of wood rather than potatoes. The wife really enjoyed her salad, though.
Anyway, the wife said that she’ll still visit their on occasion when she and her girlfriends want a fancy beer, but I see no need to go back.
September 28th, 2007 at 1:38 pm
Anon E. Mouse,
I’ve been to O’Flaherty’s five or six times now. I like the food and the atmosphere, but the service, as you say, is inexplicably slow. Every single time. At first, we assumed that they just needed to work the kinks out of the new restaurant, but they’ve been around for awhile now and I’ve yet to notice an improvement. Frankly, it’s rather bizarre.
My wife and I have even considered writing a letter to management to point this out to them, but just haven’t gotten around to it.
I do want this restaurant to succeed–there’s only a handful of non-chain restaurants in Morton–but they really need to figure this out.
September 28th, 2007 at 8:08 pm
We were there the weekend of the Pumpkin Festival. Our experience was horrendous.
We were told there was a wait of 15-20 minutes for a table. Those 15-20 minutes ended up being 40 minutes of us watching people leave, tables being bused, and no one being seated. Once we were seated it took a full 10 minutes to get a waitress to take our drink orders. Water, soda, and hot chocolate took another 20 minutes to arrive. By then we just wanted to place our orders. The kids were starving and the baby was down right restless. Another 40 minutes goes by before we had our food. Everything was overdone to slightly burnt and luke-warm. The next time the waitress got to our table, my 8-year-old had the sense to ask for to-go containers for all of us. I requested our checks. Five minutes later we had containers and our checks. But it would take another 25 before she would come get our cards to run them and another 15 to get our slips.
To add insult to injury there was a quaint older guitar strumming duo singing old ‘Irish’ favorites by Johnny Cash. Which wasn’t too bad except they were amped so loudly, you had to literally yell to your neighbor to hear. And they were at the other end of the restaurant.
I thought of talking to a manger, but at that point we were all tired, cranky, and still hungry since most of our food was inedible. We just wanted to go home. I ended up having to stop at McD’s to get the kids a bite so I wouldn’t send them to bed hungry.
I would like to support my local businesses (I live in Morton), but I won’t be going back to that one.