Amy the Food Critic?

At the suggestion of my good friend Tina, I have upped the font size. (Update: Feb. 24--I changed the font back because I couldn't stand how the larger font wasn't loading properly.) To any of my loyal following (ha!), sorry I haven't posted in so long. I realize it's been long enough to make people lose interest...oops! Nothing much has been going on lately, though. Last time I wrote about the upcoming break which would have been great except for a few small eating disasters...

Saturday night Mike (my bf) and I headed down to Newport to visit our friend Dave. Because Newport is the land of a thousand restaurants/bars, I wanted to be adventurous and try something new. I pushed for Salvation Cafe, a kind of fun and quirky eatery. We ordered the satay trio to start. Decent, but very small. I was originally thinking of ordering it as a light meal. Unless you want really light, don't do that. It was a shrimp, a piece of chicken, and a piece of steak on separate toothpicks with some peanut dipping sauce. Tasty, but tiny. Dave ordered the Blue Corn Chicken Salad. It was decent and the portion size was pretty good. He reported slightly dry chicken and was unimpressed by the lack of dressing choices. I ordered the Codfish Wrapped in Rice Paper. The codfish was cooked well, flaky like fish should be. The side of cilantro mashed potatoes had good flavor despite the green color, but they were a little cold. Poor Mike, however, ordered something that I would not recommend to ANYONE. Balsamic and Herb Marinated Beef Tenderloin. He likes his meat medium rare. Ok, so I'm not a fan of pink and bloody, but whatever floats your boat. His beef came cold and unsatisfactory. He was unhappy with the sauce as well. A mere three hours after eating it, he ended up in the bathroom with problems at both ends. Sorry, I'm trying to put it as nicely as possible. I guess I should just say food poisoning. He was ill for the remainder of the evening with lingering bathroom issues even now. I might go back to Salvation for drinks one day (the Lime Rickey was excellent), but I'm definitely wary of the food.

That was bad food experience #1. We ended up spending the night in Newport, so we all went out to lunch on Sunday. Brave Mike. What else can you do, though, if you're hungry? We tried the recently opened Blue Plate Diner. Anyone who knows me knows that I am a sucker for diners. I wish I had grown up in the 1950s and 60s. That could be a whole other post, though, so we'll ignore that for a moment. We started off with some cheese fries. Nice. No major complaints. I would have been happier with just slightly more cheese and Dave said the fries could have been a little crispier, but I would order them again. Lunch was a mixture of Philly Cheesesteaks for the boys with Minestrone for Dave and Chicken Noodle Soup for Mike. I ordered a tuna melt with mixed veggies and Mike and I split a plate of Mac n' Cheese. The cheesesteaks were actually made with tenderloin tips, which Mike and Dave both thought was a nice touch. They downed these sandwiches in minutes. The minestrone was lacking in substance--Dave counted the number of vegetable pieces and wondered where the noodles were. The chicken noodle looked good and Mike reported that it was ok. My tuna melt, although listed as coming on an english muffin (yummy), came on toast. It didn't look bad, but I wanted my english muffin so I sent it back. I wish I hadn't. The english muffin came out like a sponge. Maybe you guys aren't as picky as I am, but there's nothing worse than a soggy english muffin, especially for a tuna melt. I took a few bites and left it. My mixed veggies were even more disappointing. A promising mix of carrots, broccoli, cauliflower, and green beans was an overcooked bowl of mush. I could have mashed them all together with two strokes of my fork. Oh, and I almost forgot the mac n' cheese! It was obviously Stouffer's, fine, but barely luke warm. Bottom line? Cool retro ambience, low prices, and large menu selection do NOT make up for food quality.

Hope I haven't bored you too much with this one...

Happy Trails...