This past weekend, my “sister-aunt” was town, and she visited me uptown in my new hood of Harlem. *I call her my sister-aunt, because she is mom’s sister, but she is only 12 years older than me”. We tried to eat at Red Rooster (a more extensive rant on that below); however, we settled for Corner Social – a place that I have visited a few times.
Corner Social ( *** ) is your typical American-style restaurant with a touch of southern flair. In my previous experiences, I recognized that the restaurant served huge portions of food, so the price point versus quantify of food was fine for me.
Or so I thought.
I order a fried fish “platter”, which was about $23, and this is what came out.
Fried fish and romaine lettuce
When that mess came out, I was like:
- Oh, so the rest of the food is going go come out a little later?
- Maybe the rest of the “real” food is under the lettuce.
Hell, the restaurant could have supplemented that strugglin’ ass fish and lettuce plate with a piece of cornbread. Needless to say, I was very disappointed with the amount of food on the plate. Well . . . there was plenty of lettuce. Part of that annoyance could have been attributed to having ran a 12-mile race ( *** ) a couple of hours earlier. Here is the thing. If this dish is NOT a salad, then lettuce should NOT be the main ingredient. Although my dish was a struggle, I ate the rest of my sister-aunt’s shrimp and grits (and her friend’s toast and bacon), and was very pleased with grits.
Also, the plating of the food was nice.
Time to Rant
Red Rooster: what is it with over-hyped restaurants? I will warn that this is a bit of a hater rant, because I have not actually eaten at Red Rooster. I have said this before, there is no way in HELL that I will wait more than 45 minutes for a table at a restaurant or entry into a bar/club/lounge/crack den in NYC!!! There are way too many comparable options in this city to wait more than 20 minutes for ANYTHING. Like I mentioned above, I figured since and my aunt and her friend were tourists that I would take them to Red Rooster, since EVERYONE raves about this place. Honestly, I wanted to see what all hype was about too. Ok, I get to the restaurant and wait in the line, because I did not have a reservation. I was behind about 10 people, but I figured that the wait would be for about 3-4 tables, since most of the people were in groups. The line did not move for about 15 minutes, so I asked the hostess about the wait for a table. The hostess told me that the line was for PUTTING YOUR NAME ON THE LIST TO WAIT FOR A DAMN TABLE.
Also, the wait for a table could be 1.5 – 2 hours. What?!!! You mean these idiots were planning to wait over 2 hours for table, then wait another 30 – 45 minutes to order and receive your food. To me, that’s insane. After hearing that, I immediately told my people to meet me at Corer Social where I got that struggling plate of food.
I guess this is one of those place where you have to plan your hunger around getting a table. For example, I plan to be hungry at 1:30 pm, so we should arrive to the restaurant at 10:30 and begin the process of waiting for a table.
Word on the street is that Red Rooster is the restaurant of one of the Top Chef winners. I
do not care if Jesus, himself, was mixing drinks at the bar, an over-priced plate of food is not worth all of that waiting. Plus, the restaurant is too damn loud. Then again, I could be wrong, because I have not tried the food.
Another thing I’ve noticed with my limited/jaded view (due to my cheapness and general hater personality) of the NYC dining scene is that folks lie. By “lie”, I mean folks will front and say how great restaurant is, because they do not want to hurt their egos over waiting 2 hours, spending a ton of money, and leaving the restaurant still hungry and/or sober. I added in the sober part, because you know cocktails probably are around 20 bucks.
What’s was your most underwhelming dining experience?
