Hun and Karen, the Hacks

Who are Hun and Karen you ask. Hun is the soon-to-be-unemployed chef from the soon-to-be-out-of-business Bay Tree Cuisine. Unlike most restaurant reviews I'll give you the ass-kicking summary first and then bore you with the painful details. But I'm not going to use gay adjectives like delicate, pastel, or harmonious.

My Review of Bay Tree Cuisine

Overall rating: -2 (out of 5)
Atmosphere: Thin, like SR-71 thin
Service: I've had better service at a narcoleptic whore house
Menu: If you can look past the boring stark-white paper, black text and minimalistic descriptions it only sucked a little
Food Presentation: Yawn
Food uality: (Notice there's no 'Q' in quality...you get my point)
Food Taste: Slightly above what you'd get from the buffet at the downtown Hyatt

And Karen is...Karen Deyle a freelance restaurant critic who writes for the local paper. Hey, you stupid b!^*$, people do actually read your reviews. Being so far off on this one cost us $160 for four people. I'd rip apart your lazy, ass-hatted review but it's not worth my time you prissy little skank. I think I'll just put it on my personal life checklist to kick you and your companion in the head should I ever have the pleasure of meeting you in person.

The ordeal began with a casual get together on our friends porch with a couple glasses of wine. Next we walked to the crime scene and looked at the outdoor menu. "Lamb in sauce with vegetables". Wow, that sounds great. What kind of lamb? What kind of sauce? So many questions. Like being vague is a good marketing technique for anyone but a politician. But, some people on the street said they enjoyed the place, and of course Karen thought it was "delicate". Who can argue with a powerful statement like that.

As we weighed our options we noticed that there wasn't a single person in the place. Not a single occupied chair. Note to self and others, if you ever think about eating at a restaurant at 7pm on a Saturday and there isn't a soul inside. Walk away. Either it's a front company of some sort of illegal activity or it sucks. This place sucked so much it may have been both. But in we went, dying to find a new place.

As we were seated near the window I half expected a stage prop canvas, with a mural of a busy restaurant, to fall from the ceiling behind us. "See look at the nice people enjoying our food, come in, come in." We received our wonderfully lame menus and asked for a drink menu. "We only have wine and beer." Okay fine, no liquor license. I guess we can get by. Swing and miss, strike one. Let's see the wine list....okay, California Cab, California Merlot. If we order a Merlot I'm leaving. California, California, France, California, California. If we order a California wine I'm leaving. So we settle on this completely uninspired Cab (from California) with a twist off top. Oooh, very sheik. Then the server asks us for IDs.....enough said. We had a good laugh. My wife ordered a ginger ale. "Sorry no ginger ale, only Coke and Diet Coke." So....you sell Coke products but only those two. Ingenious. What a very progressive idea. Fewer drink options means more focus on the food. Brilliant. How about you run your ass over to the Wilson Farms, buy some cans of ginger ale and drop one in a glass. Hey, batter, batter, Strike two. Then he spent five minutes trying to articulate why we would really rather have their tea. All without a single adjective. It was linguistically amazing, but not very compelling.

So we went to order, but the wonderful menu with very little description leaves us with a few questions. "What cut of lamb is this? Rack? Shank?" We get sort of a blank-stare response. "Wow, that's a good question. Umm....I'll have to ask the chef." Let me get this straight. You have a shitty menu with almost no descriptions, only about 10 entrees, and you don't have the details for all of them in your head? Have you even tried the lamb before? Do you know what a rack of lamb is? Strike three looking.

On to the menu. Let's see no soup. Strike four. Only the same lame "vegetables" side for all the entrees. God forbid you, as a culinary artist, try to match your sides with you main meal. Hey zucchini goes with everything right. Strike five. For our appetizers we orders the "fried shrimp with salad" and "lobster something-something with salad". These actually didn't suck as much as everything else. The shrimp were warm, lightly breaded jumbo shrimp with good flavor. Amazing. Hun the Hack took a pitch. Ball one. The lobster was passable, but the salads were romaine and sliced grape tomatoes in a light vinaigrette. Very original.

And then the main course. The duck was cold, the beef tenderloin was tenderized and small. What about the lamb? Sadly, the lamb was simply lamb tenderloin, which if we hadn't been told it was rack of lamb wouldn't be a big deal. Except for the fact that we ordered it medium and got it rare. He can't hit, he can't hit, he can't hit, sa'wing batter. Strike five, strike six, strike seven. To top off the wonderful evening when we explained our issues with the meal, they tried to make us feel better about spending $160 by giving us two (there were four of us) craptacular chocolate mousse deserts. All I'll say is that they were chunky and flavorless...and that's being nice.

Hun you are a hack in the same mold as Dave Kingman, but without all the home runs. Maybe you're more like Bob Uecker. You must be in the front row....of the unemployment line.

Karen, I'll be looking for you.