As I said, these post are going to cover a variety of restaurants all over the place in our state. The first is a special review because I'm going to begin with the restaurant where the idea for this blogging site occured, The Ocean's Edge Restaurant in East Belfast, ME. What attracted me to this restaurant was the really nice signage on Rte1. Needless to say, I should have come to my senses when Greg questioned, "we're going to the Comfort Inn for dinner?" I thought I'd give the place the benefit of the doubt.....I should've walked away. The restaurant and the Inn are built right on the water, so I can see the attraction to the locale in the summer....Well, its still 30 degrees here at the end of March, so they couldn't have the French doors open to the Bay during out dining experience. The restaurant is what you'd expect from a Comfort Inn, a lot of mauve and straw baskets. The decor filled me with dread even before our meals came.
We ordered the deep fried mushrooms to start and they came with our drinks. I was pleasantly suprised at the generous pour from the bartender and later, the price ($5) for a mixed drink. The mushrooms were plentiful, but passable...a bit on the bland side. I then ordered what sounded good on the appetizer menu, but what turned out to be bloody awful...the pan fried tortolini rolled in spices with a marinara dipping sauce. Spices turned out to be massive amounts of paprika which dried out the pasta, or maybe it was the microwave reheating that did it???? David told me to send them back and I'm glad I didn't. (scroll down, gentle reader, to find out why)
With the arrival of dinner came groans after the server left. My Delmonico cut pepper steak smothered with sauteed red peppers was one of the worst cuts of meat I have ever seen and at $16.95, I decided to call the server over and show her the gristle cut that I received. She pleasantly took it back and asked what else they could serve me. I asked for a plain grilled chicken breast without the Jack Daniels sauce. It was very juicy, but a bit overpriced for $10.95! David ordered beef tips in the JD dipping sauce and I thought they were pretty bad looking, though he liked them. Greg has scallops that he told me later were some of the worst he's had.
We decided against dessert, had a few more drinks and hightailed it out of there.
Might be a great place for lunch in the summer, the view on the deck with a sandwich and a cold one...don't think you could go wrong there. Until next time....I give this place a solid C. By the way, for the three of us, the bill was $95.00 for bad food.
