Well, there are so many Irish images I c/would like to share, but
time is short and this has been sticking in my craw all day, so I’m going to go
way out of chronological order and yak about today’s food experience. It kind of posed a problem for the feeder. We’ll get back to lovely Irish stuff when
able..
When I was doing dining research for our trip, I knew we
would be having lunch in Kinsale, widely regarded as a culinary destination. One of the places that kept coming up was a
venue called (I am not making this up) “Fishy Fishy” as a top purveyor of
seafood. When our coach pulled into KInsale,
I immediately spied it
So after disembarking the bus I decided that hunting up the
other candidates was too time consuming and we might as well head for FF, as it
was pretty much at the top of the suggestions.
So in we went to be met by the affable owner Martin Shanahan, who kind
of held court while seating people. We were told we could
wait in the bar for a moment and then we could be seated. We did, and I had a chance to peruse the (lovely) bar
Especially the gin lineup which DID include my favorite
Plymouth Gin among some familiar and unfamiliar bottles (where's Waldo?)
It didn’t take too
long and we were showed to a two top and given menus and a wine list.. It’s a pleasant room with nautical stuff on the walls. As a preface let me say that they were very
busy, and there seemed to be only three harried servers to handle that main dining
space which might hold 80 or so diners.
It took a bit but finally we were approached by a server and asked about
a drink. Yes, we would like a glass of
the Sancerre, and a Muscadet for
myself. And since we knew there were
many tickets ahead of ours, we also ordered food, MFO an “open face crab
sandwich” and I figured what the heck a “Grilled whole white sole on the bone”. Fine.
Time passes, no wine. More time passes, no wine. Finally a runner arrives at the table with two
plates of food. “who had the…”
MFO raised her hand for the crab sandwich which meant the
Sole was for the Feeder. Both dishes were
nicely presented and looked very appetizing
And, they would have been even more appetizing if there were
wine with them. I flagged down a server who seemed mystified that we had none,
and said he would take care of it right away, which was maybe five minutes more. Wine
should have preceded the entrée but not. Unsat...
Both dishes were very good, and I acquitted myself nicely in
boning the Sole, and didn’t choke on any missed bones. About three quarters
through the meal, my Muscadet was finished, so I re-flagged a server indicating
I would like another. It turned out to
be the same person I flagged the first time, and he said “this will be quicker.
Sir” Good. Fish finished, a small piece of bread and
still no wine. Well, who wants a glass
of wine with no food so another flagging saying “Forget the wine, just bring
the check”.. sorry sir, of course.
Check arrives with MFO’s wine and entrée, my entrée and TWO
glasses of wine. And the young lady (our
first server who blew the wine order) said, Oh, I’m sorry, I’ll remove it. Well the credit card receipt arrived with all THREE glasses of wine included, and when I pointed that out, she said so sorry, I’ll
get the cash and came back with cash for the difference, which eventually she did.
Okay, so the food was very good but the service was
pitiful. Maybe I focus to much on the order of things, but damn it, wine should arrive pretty quickly after the order. Lots of people, few
servers, what do you think? On the way out I ran into affable Martin and in response to “How was everything” I replied that the food was good, but
the wine service was pitiful The
response was not “I’m sorry sir I apologize” but rather a series of excuses
(busy, rush, not enough feet, etc.), I will
probably go on TripAdvisor, but currently not sure what I’ll do.
One time, tourist heavy, yadda yadd, but two glasses of
wine? How hard can that be?
Whew, long day, so a
little venting feels good. Currently in
Cork, where we all dined in the hotel and were
DFD
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