Sunday, June 13th, 2010
In the past I have spoken harshly about Yelp. It has been caught having pros fill out reviews. Obviously, that is not kosher. The thing is, there is no restaurant review site that compares.
I tried DinnerBuzz. It went belly up. I tried Restaurantica, but it was severely lacking in this area. I then went to Menuism. It was very stale. It seems like it has come back some, but it is not being used. Yelp is what folks are using.
So today I spent time copying over my reviews and adding some to Yelp. We’ll see how this goes. There is a mobile app, so it’s possible to keep up while out. And supposedly Yelp is going to incorporate badges much like Foursquare uses. I don’t see that on the site, but it may be there. I am still ramping up with how to use the service.
So far, so good.
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Sunday, April 4th, 2010
Gert and I haven’t been out to dinner in a while. A few weeks ago she suggested we have a date night. With Aunt Kitty in town, the children were all geared up to kick the ‘rents out of the house. We selected the Centerton Inn for dinner. It’s been a couple years since we dined here. We don’t expect to return any time soon.
Over the years Gert and I have dined here four or five times. We spent a couple New Year’s Eves here. I don’t think either of us would call this a favorite restaurant of ours, but dinner has been good. Last night, little could be called good.
We arrived right on time for our reservation. It was clear one was not needed. Despite it being Saturday at 7:00, there were only two other tables seated. Nonetheless, we were placed at a deuce in the walkway between the two dining rooms. That meant that our meal constantly had every patron and employee tromping by our table . . . save our waitress (more on that in a moment). We didn’t have to sit there with the plethora of empty tables, but so we were placed. We also noted, it was dark, really dark, at our table. I am not 21 any longer and I struggled seeing the menu. This was just the beginning.
Denise showed up after several minutes. She took our drink order, returned, and provided the specials. After some thought, Gert and I opted for the two specials. She selected the Flounder Francoise and I the leg of lamb.
Gert’s lobster bisque was served relatively quickly. No bread was served. The bisque was adequate. I was not terribly impressed, but there wasn’t anything inherently wrong with it . . . just a bit thin. After the bisque was finished, the busser inquired whether we had had our salads yet. We hadn’t. She cleared the empty bowl.
Several, as in a few too many, minutes later, our salads were served. The salad fork was on the plate under the lettuce. It was evident all had come immediately from the refrigerator. While that is good for a number of reasons, it also had the appearance that the salads had been prepped well ahead of time. The lettuce was not as crisp as it should have been. We were quickly reminded of the love of garlic the Centerton Inn has. It is no issue for me, but there is quite a bit of garlic in their salads.
Again, no bread was served. This bothered us. Furthermore, our waitress was MIA. A few more tables were seated by now. She seemed to have three tables across two rooms. Perhaps there were others, I am not certain. Denise did not visit our table for about 30 minutes.
Again, the busser asked about whether or not we had had soup. She didn’t appear to be the brightest bulb. Nevertheless, our salads were cleared. And we sat. And we sat. We had a lengthy wait before our entrees were served. Another waiter served our food. That in itself does not bother me, but it seemed like he was helping out, not that this is a usual occurrence.
Gert’s flounder was good. It was in a garlic-caper sauce. The fish was cooked properly. The presentation was nothing remarkable, but all was fine.
My lamb, on the other hand, was a disaster through and through. The lack of light made it hard for me to see what I was eating. I did see the mountainous glop of sauce that covered the lamb. This sour cream sauce was rather bland. There was entirely too much of it on the plate. The lamb was served over a bed of carmalized red onions. They were good. Again however, there were entirely too many on the plate. I figured there were three whole onions under the lamb. There was an adequate amount of lamb. Unfortunately, it was overcooked. Actually, one slice was perfect. That was the center slice. It took a while to find that. I would prepare a forkful of food not knowing if there was lamb, onions, or both on it. It was a crap shoot. As the meal wore on, the sauce further obscured what was being eaten. Sheesh . . .
About halfway through dinner, our waitress on her way to run a credit card from the other table in our dining room asked us how our meal was. She didn’t come to a full stop to ask us that question.
Once we were done the entrees, I was ready to leave. The Centerton Inn serves a dessert platter. There were six or eight individual mini desserts on the tray. None were good. All tasted as though they were just on the edible side of frozen. We did not complete the tray. The pecan dessert that looked awesome, was so rock hard it could have chipped a tooth.
We paid our bill and left disappointed. Our dining dollars are scarce these days. There is no reason to spend them at the Centerton Inn. Our next meal will be some place else.
Posted in Culinary, New Jersey | 7 Comments »
Friday, March 12th, 2010
A big day with lots of activities kept me moving. I am so exhausted. Despite the rain, the weather is breaking, which is helping us with being upbeat. Share our day with us.
Fritz and I drove through downtown Millville to check out the sights this morning. We love this old Ivory Soap sign.
We were blessed with two boxes of wonderfully rich books to add to our classroom library. I have been busy adding the titles to our online card catalog.
Lunch at Michael’s Pizza was a bit disappointing today. The new guy wasn’t there; his pizza is good. The normal guy cooked this . . . it was spotty, but still better than Joe’s. No meat today . . .
Today the students made Irish Potatoes. They will teach a class of kindergarten students next week how to make these. This went extremely well. The students did a great job!
Michael Dooling presented to the students today. He is a children’s book author and illustrator. He put on a fabulous assembly. The students were amazed at his craft . . . as was I. He painted a boy with the help of a couple students. That is Dooling’s wife with him.
Dooling posed for a photograph after I snapped the shots with the students.
Beetle danced this evening. The studio has closed-circuit television so we can watch her lesson. My tiny dancer did a great job with tap and ballet tonight.
Beetle and I attended the Fairy Tale Ball tonight. Beetle was all about drawing early on. She is so talented. Her first drawing was an abstract, as she explained to me.
Beetle playing Skittles. I helped out with the Skittles game . . . it was the precursor to bowling. Beetle enjoyed playing, as did every other child. It’s tough setting pins by hand on one’s knees.
Beetle made a fairy princess hat and then modeled it. She had so much fun this evening. From the moment she woke up, Beetle expressed eagerness to return to the Fairy Tale Ball. I am happy that all lived up to her expectations.
Finally, on the way home, we stopped by McDonald’s for a Shamrock Shake. Such a glorious evening should be punctuated with a treat. And there’s nothing like a Shamrock Shake.
Posted in Education, Family, Miscellaneous, New Jersey | 3 Comments »
Thursday, March 11th, 2010
It appears Gypsy Smokehouse is out of business. I am not surprised, but it is sad. Their Southern Pride smoker is for sale . . . Michelle Malkin advertises an open thread, yet registration to her site has been closed for years . . . Racial discrimination in pricing of Barbies or inventory control? . . . Excellent videos on how to break down a chuck roll . . . How did my watch become three days out of date? . . . Driving through Buena the other day I saw a few children playing on the front lawn of a house. Three of them were kicking a ball while a fourth was taking a leak by the tree . . . Gert has the pet frog in the classroom, yet I am the one who buys the crickets each week . . . There is something about March. The weather is breaking and two days until the clocks change. This is when I used to see lots of Grateful Dead shows . . . According to YouTube, because I watched JB’s Smoked Chicken and Ribs video, it has recommended I watch Tiger Woods’ presser. What is the connection? . . . RIP Merlin Olsen . . . I watched my first baseball game earlier this week. Bring on the regular season . . . hankering for paella . . . big day tomorrow and I am wondering how I am going to procure food, not only when, but what since it will be a meatless Friday . . . Facebook is where different groups of friends should never meet . . . Hey, any locals want to get together for a friendly BBQ cookoff sometime? It would be a fun excuse for a party . . .
Posted in Baseball, Culinary, Football, Miscellaneous, New Jersey, Sports | No Comments »
