Cafe Sam: A Disappointment
It’s rare that I look forward to going out to dinner at a particular place; most of the time I see a dinner as a convenience option, knowing that I’ll be able to do as well for myself at home. With Cafe Sam, it was different. I had heard from enough sources that the food was worth talking about and I was expecting a great meal.
Boy, was I wrong. My Greek salad was made with iceberg and olives from a supermarket can: generic old black olives. On a Greek Salad. With iceberg. Now come on, you’re not even putting forth an effort. If you tell me that I’m going to have a Greek salad, I expect it to have kalamatas at minimum, and something with a pit still in it no matter what. The lettuce should have some variety to it. The feta chunks shouldn’t be of uniform size: that’s indicative of it coming pre-crumbled in a plastic bag instead of as whole cheese crumbled fresh in the restaurant. This salad failed on all counts. I’ve gotten better salads from church volunteers.
I got the duck, which to the restaurant’s credit they did well with: it was medium rare and quite tender. The side dishes were all right, though in miniscule portions. Cranberry jelly is something that I normally wouldn’t think of for duck, but I don’t know why not; it seems fairly obvious in retrospect. I’d be more impressed with the chef’s food pairing abilities if two of my dining companions who had ordered chicken and pastrami-wrapped salmon filets hadn’t also gotten the cranberry jelly.
They both also got the quinoa/lentil mix that someone had left a teaspoon or two of on my plate. Honestly, I would have preferred more of it and fewer of the somewhat soggy parsleyed potatoes that I got as my optional side.
Another side dish option was peas and mushrooms, which tasted better than it looked. Perhaps the presentation style promoted a false image: all of the sides were brought to the table in cafeteria-style pudding bowls. They looked like something that would arrive to your table if you were across the street at Ritter’s.
I concluded my meal with a dish of the bittersweet chocolate mousse, which in truly bad form came topped with non-dairy artificial whipped topping. Boo! Hiss! For shame! They put it on the cheesecake, too. I’ll give the Village Inn a pass on that because they’re a Breakfast-All-Day chain, but when you’re a local establishment trying to promote a reputation of quality, a destination I put a tie on to go to and didn’t feel out of place, where waitstaff tour with a platter of complementary hors d’oeuvres—it’s just not going to fly. Stop trying to put on a good show and start trying to serve a good meal. Begin with the ingredients and the technique. SI/SO as they say: you only get out what you put in.
Rating: 1/2 an orange.
March 14th, 2007 at 9:14 pm
I was always under the impression Cafe Sam was a local quick sandwich joint - not a full out sit down meal. Interesting.
March 16th, 2007 at 2:03 pm
This sounds like the time my inlaws took us to a local steak house that they had been hyping up.
There was no choice of salad it was just the house salad. The dressing tasted like they just poured the juice from an olive jar over it. Since it was Nana’s birthday they gave her a free steak, but they photo copied her licensce, and made her fill out paperwork. MIL and I got filets, and they were surrounded in gristle and fat, and the mashed potatos had a skin on top from sitting under the heat lamp. It was awful. All of the glasses had spots on them, and this was not a cheap Outback steak dinner. I think the cheapest meal on the menu was in the $20 range (that was the chicken).