Monday, February 4, 2013

From Bad to Awesome- Culinary Adventures This Weekend

I am a huge fan of sites like Yelp and TripAdvisor. I have over 500 reviews on Yelp and over 200 on TripAdvisor so I like to find places to review, and the best time to do that is the weekend. I'm not a crazy foodie, and I'm not hard to impress but I like good food and good service, and I definitely like sharing my opinion about it. My friend and I drive through Rowley quite often. We pass The Bradford Tavern and always marvel at how full the parking lot is. I believe they're owned by the same people who own the Sylvan Street Grille restaurants. On Friday, we were heading toward New Hampshire and noticed the lot wasn't super full so we decided to finally stop and grab a meal. The inside of the restaurant is beautiful. Low ceilings with beams, a wonderful fire, nice tables and a great atmosphere. That's probably the only good part of our eating experience. Our waitress was, at best, disinterested and, at worst, actively trying to be as unfriendly and dense as possible. She didn't know what was on tap, and even pointed at the menu for us to look without saying a word. Rude. I ordered my main dish from the special menu. It came with soup or a salad and dessert. I pointed to it as I ordered, and she still never asked me what I wanted (soup or salad) and walked away before I could tell her. We had to wait for her to return to complete the order. I ordered the bunless burger. My friend ordered the haddock casserole with a cheese sauce. They gave us bread and a nice dip first. That was pretty good. The chowder came in a funky sloped bowl. It was way too salty. I live on the coast and have had a lot of chowders. This one was clearly not fresh and loaded with salt to disguise the old flavor. Our main dishes were no better. The bunless burger was disgusting. Charred with minimal cheese, and a totally unappetizing tower of peppers, mushrooms and onions on top. I couldn't eat it so I switched with my friend, and even he could barely get it down, and called it the worst burger he'd ever tasted. His dish was also bad. The rice was mushy and not hot enough. The veggies were burning hot and had obviously been prepared before and nuked in the microwave. Yuck. The fish was covered in a thick, chunky cheese sauce that tasted so gross that I blanched after one bite. We ended up taking it home (the waitress didn't bother to ask why we hadn't eaten any of the fish) and it was no better later in the night. Finally, the waitress (who didn't check on us once nor ask if we wanted more water or beer) came with the check and I had to remind her that dessert was included. I went with the chocolate cake since they surely couldn't screw that up. Oh- they did. Slathered in chocolate sauce it was dry, partially frozen and stale. They must have taken it out of the freezer and made it weeks ago. Yuck. Neither of us could finish it. Again, the waitress didn't even ask why we didn't eat the cake and at that point I didn't feel like pointing it out as it was clear she didn't care. The table behind us had an amazing waitress who explained soups of the day and what went into meals. I was jealous! I've never had a worse meal at a place that looked so nice and was so popular. The next day, we found ourselves in downtown Hudson. I saw a cute sign that said Rail Trail and we decided to go in as we thought it was a bakery or coffee place. We were very pleasantly surprised. It was a flatbread pizza restaurant called Rail Trail Flatbread Co. Quite busy but we were seated within five minutes. Our waitress was great. She explained the menu and even had recommendations. They had a ton of beers on tap. We decided to order a 'do it your way' flatbread. We went with crushed tomato sauce, roma tomatoes and olives. Each ingredient was $1.25 so we didn't want to go too crazy. I have to say it was the most delicious pizza I have tasted in lord knows how long. Delicious! We were good and took half home to eat later (oh, later as in the minute we did get home!). I was very impressed with the seasoning used. Our waitress was so friendly. It was a huge contrast with the experience on Friday night. So, if you're ever hungry for pizza and near downtown Hudson, MA- I recommend stopping in at the Rail Trail Flatbread Co. If you're hungry in Rowley, MA- I recommend driving on by the Bradford Tavern!

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