Guy Fieri please come home

Guy Fieri please come home your restaurant needs you!  I know that Chef Fieri has hit the big time with winning the Food Network’s next star contest and when not traveling doing his Diners and Dives show he’s busy with a billion new projects but he might want to occasionally check on his restaurant in his home town of Santa Rosa, California.

This Saturday evening we decided to dine at Chef Fieri’s Johnny Garlics.  We began salivating over the prospect of delicious food from one of the area’s top chefs.  Oh my God were we wrong.  It appears that Chef Fieri has lost contact with his restaurant.

When we sat down we were asked what we would like without mention of any specials so we started with drinks and focaccia bread that we dipped in olive oil and balsamic vinegar.  So far so good. I was really looking forward to starting with the butter nut squash soup and my friend was also eagerly awaiting his salad when the waitress showed up with our entrees.  I asked about the soup and salad and was curtly rebuffed by her stating that we didn’t order any such thing and if we wanted it she would go get it as she placed our food on the table.  We made a comment about the order that food should be served in and began our slide into Johnny Garlic’s hell.  I really wanted a glass of wine with my dinner but that was apparently not to be as the place was half empty and the waitress was busy yakking with her fellow coworkers to pay any attention to us.

My buffalo meatloaf was actually quite good, moist and tender and full of flavor.  At that point I noticed the Brussels sprouts on my plate.  Curiously I was never offered any options of vegetables.  In a thousand years, I would have never requested Brussels sprouts.  As much as I disagreed with former President George W Bush’s policies, I must admit I absolutely share his hatred of that vegetable.  However, since this is Chef Fieri’s restaurant, I assumed that he created a little gem of taste from these horrible vegetables and plopped one in my mouth.  WRONG!  They weren’t even cooked.  They were raw, not firm and pleasant, but hard and raw.  I spit the offending green marble back on my plate and it landed with a resounding plunk.  I’m probably lucky the damn thing didn’t break the plate.  The mashed potatoes were interesting as they contained some kind of synthetic skin like substance that had an unsettling mouth feel.  As best as I could tell this might have been potato skin but what in the world they did to it was beyond my ability to guess.  I ate the meatloaf, I edible item out of three.

My friend ordered the baby back ribs.  It was a beautiful looking rack that held great promise.  Looking at the ribs is where that love affair ended.  Between the two of us we have cooked and/or eaten a herd of ribs so we knew what to expect but our expectations were never met.  These ribs were barely introduced to fire and the meat stuck to the bone as if it had been super glued in place.  After struggling with a knife and fork in an attempt to divorce the meat and bone a piece was finally freed.  Alas the valiant effort was for naught as the meat was tough.

The rib order came with a few fries, too few fries, actually 11 fries.  Yes we counted them.  It was easy because there were so few of them.

We beat a hasty retreat after the entrées absolutely petrified to perceive what they might have done to the desserts and went next door to Taco Bell.