We went to one of our birthday lunches at Blackfinn Ameripub in Royal Oak. Back in the day, Omar and I ate here when it was a nicer steak house. The food was OK then, nothing exceptional. Now they have reinvented themselves as an “Ameripub” which they describe as a lively, high energy restaurant with classic american fare. Well Blackfinn is hardly “lively”. In fact, I think our waitress was either asleep or “lost in deep thought” most of the time.
And the food, hardly “classic” is mediocre and rather pedestrian. Let me start by saying our lunch took two and half hours. Our typical work lunch is an hour, maybe an hour/15. All our meters expired, along with our patience. Our waitress had the hardest time even taking our orders. Our drinks took like 30 minutes to come out, and our food over an hour.
I asked if they had “battered fries” (Please refer to my previous fryrade) to which the waitress said, “no our fries are good, they are steak fries”. They were neither good, nor steak fries, and seeing them come out to another table, opted for the salad.
I ordered the Chicken and Avocado Chopped Salad with roasted chicken, sliced avocado, bacon, romaine and iceberg lettuce, carrots, bleu cheese crumbles, egg, red onions, roma tomatoes, cucumbers and zinfandel vinaigrette. I ordered sans blue cheese as it has been giving me wicked migraines lately. My salad, and everyone’s salad were served without chicken. Really, my chicken chopped salad and you forgot the chicken? It did however, have one sad browned slice of avocado all alone on top of a bed of barely dressed lettuce. I actually don’t think I saw any bacon either now that I think of it!! When we all asked where our chicken was, she apologized and proceeded to try and take our salads back. We suggested to the obviously new, overwhelmed waitress that perhaps it would be easier to bring the chicken to US. Ahhhh – lightbulb goes off.
So the chef, in his culinary genius, proceeds to takes yesterdays (or last weeks) Costco chicken and shreds some of it up and portions out to each of us. The dry shreds of what might have been a delicious chicken at one time required two more sides of vinaigrette just to choke it down.
Ugg. My salad was unforgettable. Unforgettably bad, and that is saying a lot because it is hard to screw up a salad. I think I still have some chicken stuck in my throat.
The waitress took probably 45 minutes to cash us out. It was physically painful to watch her try and keep everything straight. We would have been faster had we all lined up to cash out individually at the bar.
We go out a lot for lunch, and it is a general consensus we won’t go back there, we just don’t have 3 hours to spare!!