This morning my kids invited me to a restaurant.
Let’s start with the positive. The owners are clearly passionate about this restaurant, and even about personalizing it to their customers—as soon as I stepped up to the storefront and found out that they were calling it “Mommy Let’s Go The Restaurant”, I was impressed.
And the portion sizes! They wouldn’t stop piling food on my plate. Even when I asked them to. The concept of willing participation seemed to be a little fuzzier for this place, but I’ll give them points for enthusiasm.
Ambiance was okay. There was clearly some attempt to make this place seem “homey”. But the music playing was just a song called “The Choo Choo Boogie” on repeat. I’m not opposed to train songs, but I think perhaps they should consider varying it a little bit for the sanity of their customers.
I was also disappointed to find that the only cutlery available was knives. One of the owners, the small one, kept calling it a “fork” but it clearly wasn’t. It made it a little bit difficult to eat, but I managed to make do. The plates were clearly cutting boards: very hipster.
The food choices are maybe especially where things started to go off the rails. The tall owner offered me a pear when I sat down to the table, which seemed like a reasonable appetizer. For my main, I ordered a baked potato; it apparently came with a side of a whole raw bulb of garlic and a cucumber, which I wasn’t that interested in, but fine. It’s when the small owner wouldn’t stop handing me produce that I began to get overwhelmed. I think she sensed this and tried to head me off with soft serve ice cream, which I will admit may have worked.
The owners sat down to eat with me. Unorthodox, but they had no other customers so I could understand why. Their conversation was a little lacking and mostly involved naming the foods they had available, but they appeared to not even know what all of the foods were. Someone should explain to them the difference between a tomato and a potato. They were, however, impressed when I correctly identified a mushroom for them. (I don’t mean the mushroom species or anything. They were just amazed when I told them it was a mushroom.)
Both owners watched me like a hawk the entire time that I ate. The moment I seemed like I might be done, they were ready to swoop in and take away my plate. However, they didn’t even get as far as the kitchen before just throwing the food on the ground and screaming. I question whether this place is up to health code.
2 stars. I wouldn’t willingly choose this place again and yet somehow I suspect I’ll end up here again. ⭐️ ⭐️
