{"id":6738,"date":"2009-07-03T08:55:57","date_gmt":"2009-07-03T12:55:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/foodembrace.com\/?p=6738"},"modified":"2009-07-03T08:55:57","modified_gmt":"2009-07-03T12:55:57","slug":"july-2nd-2009-old-bag-of-nails-in-hilliard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/foodembrace.com\/2009\/07\/july-2nd-2009-old-bag-of-nails-in-hilliard\/","title":{"rendered":"July 2nd, 2009: Old Bag of Nails in Hilliard"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last night Scott and I made our first attempt at doing the majority of our grocery shopping at Whole Foods.\u00a0 This is part of my Get a Grip on the Grocery Bill Initative.\u00a0 My findings and discussion of said trip will be in another post all dedicated to itself.\u00a0 I will tease you and say that it will also include pictures of me shopping that my husband stealthily took with his phone.\u00a0 I will also tell you that I apparently look ridiculous when I shop.<\/p>\n

Moving along, this post is about last night’s debacle of a dinner.\u00a0 We got home late and Whole Foods, once again, did not have pizza dough out for purchase.\u00a0 Since it was after 8pm, I did not have time nor the energy to make dough myself.\u00a0 We decided to try a little hole in the wall place down the street.<\/p>\n

Now here’s the thing, Scott and I are all about trying new places.\u00a0 And this place already did look a little rough around the edges but what the hell right?\u00a0 It’s a hole in the wall, we can deal.<\/p>\n

And then a lady walked out of the building and she was barefoot followed by a man who was walking a dog.<\/p>\n

Um.<\/p>\n

And then just as we reach the door, a man (who was also very nice! Please remember I just said that!) who probably cut ties with his dentist somewhere around 1937 walked out and greeted us with a smile.\u00a0 Then we smelled the distinct smell of a bar full of smoke.<\/p>\n

Oh.<\/p>\n

It was at this point we turned around and left.\u00a0 Smoke is not something I tolerate very well and since leaving home, I try my hardest not to engage with it.<\/p>\n

Instead we went to Old Bag of Nails in Hilliard.\u00a0 This is a local chain of “pubs”.\u00a0 The soul reason for going to this place is because they were supposed to have the Dublin Irish Festival Stout available.\u00a0 The DIF is a local festival that starts the first of August.\u00a0 It’s a huge all weekend long event.\u00a0 They have their own steins and stout created just for the festival and have it shipped to local restaurants.<\/p>\n

I love stout and wanted to try it.\u00a0 So off to OBON we went.<\/p>\n

Never. Again.<\/p>\n

We had such a horrible time and the food was just ridiculously bad it’s crazy.\u00a0 Let’s recap it, shall we?!<\/p>\n

We arrive and get seated by a lovely hostess.\u00a0 The server comes over to take our order and Scott asks for the DIF stout.\u00a0 She gets the deer-in-the-headlights look and asks he what he said.\u00a0 He repeats.<\/p>\n

“Yeah, we don’t have that. Yeah, no.”<\/p>\n

In sort of that laughing tone that someone uses when they think you just asked them something preposterous but they have to give you an answer.\u00a0 And in my head, I was already going, yeah I can see where this night is headed<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"Guiness<\/p>\n

He ordered a Guiness for us instead.\u00a0 Which we had to wait probably 10 minutes for.\u00a0 She brought water out for me right away and then left. Leaving us waiting and waiting on Scott’s drink.\u00a0 This was my first time having Guiness. I always stayed away from it because I thought it was thick and syrupy.\u00a0 But since I now love dark beers thought I would give it a try.<\/p>\n

Should have stayed away.\u00a0 It’s not thick and syrupy, it tastes like flat pop. Ew. I have no idea why it’s popular and considered “one of the best” stouts. Yuck-o.<\/p>\n

For an appetizer we ordered the Caribbean Black Bean Dip.<\/p>\n

\"Black<\/p>\n

There is nothing Caribbean about this dip unless they are referring the black beans making it “Caribbean”.\u00a0 It barely had any flavor.\u00a0 Just some beans in a cream based sauce with over fried tortilla chips.\u00a0 Flour tortilla chips, that kind that doesn’t let go of all the grease?\u00a0 Those.\u00a0 I had two chips and a few forks of just dip.<\/p>\n

I ordered the house salad with my meal.\u00a0 I order house salads because I’m conducting an experiment.\u00a0 Results should be tallied soon.<\/p>\n

\"House<\/p>\n

This salad? Pathetic. The menu description said tomatoes yet somehow there are none on my salad.\u00a0 I forgot there was bacon or I would have asked for it to be removed.\u00a0 I tried to avoid it as much as possible but a few tastes snuck in and it tasted like Bac-Os.\u00a0 EWWW.\u00a0 I avoided the croutons and also the red onion so basically what I had was some chopped romaine with a drizzle of balsamic dressing. Fun!<\/p>\n

\"Clam<\/p>\n

Scott ordered the “house made” clam chowder.\u00a0 It tasted not house made but from a can.<\/p>\n

After the appetizer and soup\/salad we sat around waiting for our food to come.<\/p>\n

And waited.<\/p>\n

And waited.<\/p>\n

And waited.<\/p>\n

We waited probably 1\/2 an hour.\u00a0 Not once did the server come over to check on us.\u00a0 Or to clear away dishes.\u00a0 Or to say the food was taking a while and would be right out.\u00a0 Or to ask what was going on or even mention the wait in any way, shape, or form.\u00a0 She did wait on the tables around us though.\u00a0 That couple behind us.\u00a0 Oh and that table over there with the larger party.\u00a0 Oh and the table behind us.\u00a0 But not us.<\/p>\n

Finally the manager came over and said that there was a “problem with our ticket” and it fell off the whatever and was passed over.\u00a0 Our meals should be right out and they were on the house.<\/p>\n

I told Scott that I think our server messed up and forgot to put the order in or something.\u00a0 Because she stopped “serving” us and ignored us ever since our soup and salad arrived.\u00a0 And wouldn’t you think the server would come out and say something about the situation before the manager arrives?\u00a0 When the food came out, it wasn’t our server who brought it, it was the manager. Strange, right?<\/p>\n

\"Fish<\/p>\n

Scott’s main meal with a fish sandwich, the fish blackened.\u00a0 No idea what kind of fish because you know, that wasn’t labeled or information they thought was necessary.\u00a0 Fries on the side.\u00a0 The fish, although a bit dry, was actually not bad.\u00a0 I had a few bites.\u00a0 I also tried a fry which was just silly gross.<\/p>\n

\"Veggie<\/p>\n

My main meal was the “grilled vegetable quesadilla” that was supposed to come with seasonal grilled veggies.\u00a0 I asked for pepper jack in place of Monterey jack and was met with a bit of reluctance but then said it was doable.\u00a0 My thought was, why wouldn’t it be?\u00a0 Pepper jack is a cheese offered on several other dishes what would be the problem?<\/p>\n

When my dish arrived that’s when my crabbiness went straight to hunger frustration.\u00a0 I was just mad.\u00a0 My quesadilla with “seasonal grilled veggies” contained way too much cheese, white onion, green pepper, and mushrooms.\u00a0 All that cheese glistening on top? Isn’t even close to how much cheese was inside<\/em> the quesadilla.\u00a0 It was too much and came across like they were making up for lack of “veggies”.<\/p>\n

Mushrooms, white onion, and green pepper are standard all year long veggies, where’s the seasonal stuff?\u00a0 Oh right, it’s just a description to make people think they are getting something fancy when they are not.<\/p>\n

This quesadilla was beyond greasy, I’m guessing from the low quality of cheese.\u00a0 There was oil everywhere.\u00a0 It had more cheese than veggies, not what I’m looking for.\u00a0 I had to pick the mushrooms out because I don’t eat them.\u00a0 I was mad at myself for this because I forgot that when restaurants say “veggie whatever” they really mean “mushroom whatever”. For some reason veggie is equated with mushrooms and lots of them.<\/p>\n

Well this Flexitarian who prefers veggie stuff hates mushrooms.\u00a0 Not all of us like to eat fungus! I’m just saying. I had 1\/4 of the quesadilla and one bite of another quarter and decided to just stop eating. \u00a0 It was too cheesy and too greasy and had no veggies.\u00a0 I wasn’t going to put my body through having to deal with something it was going to hate. I’ve learned my lesson. Also of note, and you probably realize this, but I did not eat the sour cream or “salsa”. The “salsa” was canned tomatoes, green pepper, and white onion. What kind of salsa is that?!<\/p>\n

Part of my frustration here too, and this goes for all restaurants not just OBON. Is that “seasonal veggies” are offered in other dishes.\u00a0 There was one sandwich listed that came with grilled zucchini.\u00a0 Why can’t grilled zucchini then be in the veggie quesadilla?\u00a0 Or some carrots?\u00a0 Some spinach, which you have on hand because you have spinach salads in the menu.<\/p>\n

:banghead:<\/p>\n

These are things I don’t understand about restaurants and how they are run.\u00a0 Because to me, it comes across like you don’t give a fig about your customers and all you care about is money.<\/p>\n

The server didn’t stop by again to refill drinks, ask about how we were doing, or to clear plates. She didn’t even stop back by to see if our dinner was okay.\u00a0 The manager did though.\u00a0 The next time the server stopped by was to bring the check which she just dropped off not even asking us if we wanted dessert.\u00a0 Scott had to catch her before she ran away to ask for a box.<\/p>\n

We looked the check over and it still wasn’t right.\u00a0 The manager did take care of our meals like he said, but we still paid for the beer ($5.50, holy hell) appetizer, salad, and soup.\u00a0 All of which we had no problem with.\u00a0 However, they charged Scott $3.99 for his soup which should have been $.1.99 because it came with his meal.\u00a0 At that point we didn’t care and just wanted to leave as quickly as possible.<\/p>\n

What a horrible horrible experience we had at Old Bag of Nails in Hilliard.\u00a0 We haven’t had something that bad for a very long time.\u00a0 No more OBON for us unless we are in a situation where it can’t be avoided.\u00a0 This is why it’s better to stick with small non-chain restaurants.\u00a0 That’s their lively hood, and they care about their customers.<\/p>\n

I came home, changed into jammies, and poured myself a glass of raspberry mineral water to cure my woes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last night Scott and I made our first attempt at doing the majority of our grocery shopping at Whole Foods.\u00a0 This is part of my Get a Grip on the Grocery Bill Initative.\u00a0 My findings and discussion of said trip will be in another post all dedicated to itself.\u00a0 I will tease you and say […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4KYWa-1KG","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/foodembrace.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6738"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/foodembrace.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/foodembrace.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foodembrace.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foodembrace.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6738"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/foodembrace.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6738\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/foodembrace.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foodembrace.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foodembrace.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}