A New Restaurant -- Doomed To Failure?

We went out to eat tonight.

Jan and I took our granddaughter, Katie, out for a "field trip" today, so Katie's Mom and Dad could have a day to relax, and maybe get a it of a date.

They enjoyed it, taking a picnic to the lakefront.

On the way to pick up Katie, we noticed an old restaurant that had closed was now a new restaurant, "Rotisserie."

The old restaurant, the one that closed, was called "Pig Out Inn." Not exactly the most sterling, attractive name for a restaurant, but a couple of years ago, we tried it anyway. Because, after all, it was a BARBECUE restaurant, and we do love good barbecue.

Unfortunately, they were so busy being clever with their food and their decor and the names of items on their menu, they forgot the first rule of the restaurant business: the food must be good. The barbecue meat was ho-hum, the barbecue sauce had (yuck) mustard in it, an offense that should be punishable either by death or by being forced to watch C-SPAN for a week, whichever is worse, the vegetables were overcooked (can you say "canned"?), and the prices were competitive with restaurants that had tablecloths and candles and actual good food. One of their clever menu items was, you're not going to believe this, breaded and deep-fried corn on the cob. Somebody in our party (I forget who, but it wasn't me) got some, the one time we went there, and it was every bit as bad as it sounds like it would be. The corncob had a round wooden stick in it to use as a handle, which was okay, but the fried batter fell off the corn when you tried to bite it, and the corn turned to glue in your mouth and stuck to all your teeth. I couldn't wait to get home to my toothbrush.

Needless to say, after that one visit, we didn't go back. It seems the population of the town agreed with us, because they stayed away in droves. That restaurant lasted more than a year, and I was surprised it lasted that long.

After they closed, the building remained empty for a number of months, and just today we noticed a new restaurant had opened in that building. The name is "Rotisserie," and so we decided we would try it out for dinner tonight. So when we picked up Katie at her house, we set it up with her parents to meet us at "Rotisserie" at 6:30, at which time they could have their daughter back.

So we all arrived at the restaurant, put two tables together to accommodate five adults and a baby, and browsed their menu. It looked interesting enough, with only a few wacky items on it, such as fried yucca. They were out of fried yucca. But they did have sweet potato fries, which lots of people in our group like.

Because we were all settled at the table, I got everyone's order and took it up to the counter, where I gave it to the counterman, and went over it with him, to make sure he could read it accurately.

When we got down to the bottom, he asked what we wanted to drink - I pointed to the bottom of my order, where I'd written "5 water."

He hollered to someone I suspect was the owner, "They want five waters to drink." The person he hollered to answered back, "We have bottled water. A buck a bottle."

I said, "You don't have tap water?" and he said, "No, only bottled water."

I went back to our table and reported that this place only had bottled water at a buck a bottle. After some discussion, in which I admit I took an active position, we decided to leave and go somewhere else.

So I can't report on the quality if the food at Rotisserie's, because we didn't eat any. We left. And they lost five sales tonight, and who knows how many in the future, because we certainly would have come back if the food was good, because they were so chintzy they had to try to squeeze five more dollars out of us by trying to sell us water instead of providing tap water like every other restaurant in town.

I don't know whether this restaurant will be around long or not, because I can't tell you if the food was good. But if the rest of the community is as put out as I am about their chintziness, they may not last long, either.

Oh, and we wound up eating some good Chinese food.

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UPDATE - December 2010 - "Rotisserie" is now closed. I noticed this about a month ago.

It seems the population of this area agrees with me.

I wonder if any restaurant owners read this? If so, take a lesson.

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