The Trifecta of Terrible Food

It might be possible that I’ve become a total FOOD SNOB.

Or maybe I am spoiled living in a city like Portland that has sooo many wonderful restaurants.

Maybe I’ve been lucky being able to eat at restaurants like Craftsteak, Masu, and Apizza Scholls.

But I went to Yakima restaurants over the weekend with a completely open mind and each meal experience was worse than the next. Friday night when Michael and I got into town we wanted to eat at a Mexican restaurant.

Yakima is a middle-of-nowhere town in Eastern Washington but it has a reputation for good fruits and veggies. Because of the farms there, there’s a huge migrant worker community and I just assumed there would be some good Mexican food to be had.

Boy was I wrong! I even went to Yelp.com to find the highest reviewed restaurants in Yakima. I am convinced that every last person in Yakima is INSANE. Or has no palette. 🙂 So on Friday we went to Santiago’s Restaurant for Mexican food. The restaurant had a very cute outdoor patio surrounded by flowers. It was a nice location and the patio was pleasant. By 9pm it was still 82 degrees out so we sat outside happily and enjoyed our drinks. The service was good. The food was not.

The food wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t really good either. It wasn’t spicy, flavorful or savory. The chips were stale and plain, the salsa was bland, and the enchiladas had no sauce on them. It was a disappointing experience.

On Saturday Michael and I went out to lunch near the hotel. Bob’s Burgers and Brews. I didn’t have high expectations and I wasn’t let down.

It was essentially a Red Robin but with a different name. But it wasn’t as good as a Red Robin! The menu looked exactly the same as RR and was even the laminated sheet. We decided to split the steak salad and the spinach artichoke dip appetizer.

The dip wasn’t anything special but it wasn’t horrible. Just bland. The service was slow and iffy at best. I had to ask the waitress twice for water and napkins.

The steak salad wasn’t awful but it wasn’t anything great either. Mediocre all the way. The meat was chewy and kind of overdone too.

The next meal was an early dinner before heading to the concert. I suggested the Barrel House Restaurant because people on Yelp raved about it so much. I told Michael it had to be good, right? Last chance for Yakima to redeem itself!

I wasn’t hungry but I knew we wouldn’t be able to eat dinner at a normal hour because of the concert so Michael and I decided to split a burger.

It might have been one of the worst burgers I’ve ever had. It was dry, overcooked (why doesn’t anyone know what “medium” is??) and the meat was absolutely flavorless. It came with a bland white cheese and caramelized onions. The bun was clearly homemade but it was lifeless and had no flavor. I finally gave up on the bun and just ate the meat. The only good thing: the seasonal fruit was actually fresh and delicious.

The trifecta of terrible food was complete. We were both disappointed. Not only was the food atrocious everywhere we went, it was pricey. That Mexican food we got the first night cost me $50. Yuck!

Sunday we wanted to get a real breakfast somewhere so we decided to brave one more restaurant.

The Waffles Caffe. Yes there’s two f’s. We took a gamble because honestly, how badly can someone screw up breakfast? Answer: pretty bad!

Michael got scrambled eggs and bacon. The bacon was good, the eggs were not. I got the breakfast burrito which did not taste good. It came with Pace picante sauce. That is NOT salsa. Vile. I choked down 3/4 of the burrito and gave up. My breakfast came with “seasonal fruit” and I use that term lightly. It was fruit from a can. I am appalled because this is Yakima–home of AMAZING fruit farms! They couldn’t get some fresh fruit from the nearby Indian reservation?!?

We happily escaped The Town of Terrible Food. We stopped at Hood River for a slice of pizza for lunch on the drive home and it was like coming home. FINALLY. Decent food!

When we got home from our trip we unpacked and I went to the pool for a lovely swim. Then we made dinner with REAL food. GOOD food!

Dinner was blackened salmon with fresh green beans steamed (that we bought from a fruit stand on our way out of Yakima). The zucchini came from our garden. Check out what I came home to:

Crazy zucchini! It’s good to be home and back to the land of good food!

QUESTION: What was your worst restaurant experience?