Sunday, November 25, 2012

Restaurant Review - Green Tea, Bangor Maine

Jody: We went out Saturday to have a nice anniversary dinner after seeing Lincoln (great movie, btw). We stopped by Kobe, also in Bangor, but between the thick, trendy crowd, and the New Jersey prices, we decided to try Green Tea, just down the road. Apparently it was a night for disappointments.

Green Tea tries to be a fusion of old and new. The first thing you notice is the new Tokyo style neon lights illuminating the exterior. This continued into the waiting area with hundreds of tiny neon lights shining on the walls. Once you get to the interior, though, it is all wood beam and shoji screens. The bar, located int he middle of the restaurant had 2 TVs, both with football games playing. What seemed to be an attempt at fusion ended up just confusing. 

 









Steve:    My experience at Green Tea was slanted by my experience in the food-service field.  A good chunk of my life has been spent in food-service in one capacity or another.  I am usually VERY forgiving of a lot of things in a restaurant, but Green Tea unfortunately pushed that forgiveness to the breaking point, and beyond.  As Jody pointed out, the decor was nice, and the place was clean.  The food was even good, when I was actually able to eat it, since the implements we'd requested didn't arrive with the appetizers, even though they had been requested when we ordered initially.  

Jody: There were a lot of empty tables, too many for a Saturday night. That should have been our first warning. We waited 10 minutes for our waitress to arrive and in the mean time, the host that seated us offered us a different table. We should have taken him up on the offer, because our waitress turned out to be a grave disappointment. We ordered a couple drinks, hot sake for me, soda for Steve. We also ordered appetizers dinner and requested chopsticks and water. The sake and soda arrived fairly quickly, as did the appetizers. The chopsticks didn't arrive until the dinner and we had to ask again for the water. I noticed immediately that while I had ordered handrolls, which were showed as a single conical roll on the menu, I was given six-piece sushi rolls. I pointed out to the waitress that I had ordered handrolls and she said to me, "those *are* handrolls". I knew better, but I really didn't want to sit and wait for new rolls to be made, so I resigned myself to eating something I didn't order. I ordered Mochi ice cream for dessert. I have to admit that I had never had mochi before, and was unprepared for it's uncooked doughy consistency.  It was unusual and sat a little heavy. Oddly, it was topped with whipped cream and sprinkles, which, I guess, was a little throw back to the old & new fusion thing. It didn't work for me, though, and I scrapped it off.

My non-handrolls
 Steve:     I really am so very disappointed in this place.  I liked all the food I ordered.  I enjoyed the decor.  Our meals came out in a very timely fashion, and tasted good.  And the prices were very reasonable.  I am so sad that the terrifyingly abysmal service wrecked that.  Not only was our server unable to fill water glasses ON REQUEST, she walked past our table after filling the glasses of the table next to us with the pitcher of water in hand AFTER we had asked for water.  My appetizer sat until my entree arrived, since I had no chopsticks to eat it with.  By the time I got to it, it was lukewarm.  Still tasted good, but that's not the point.  Now, there were forks on the table, but in my mind, my stubborn mind, I had asked for a specific utensil and did not receive it in a timely fashion.  I shouldn't be forced to do something I don't want to, especially if we're paying for the privilege of being there in the first place. 

Mongolian Beef
      Lastly, I am going to point out that our server was both ignorant of the type of food she was serving and also almost non-existent as far as being attentive goes.  As Jody pointed out before, she didn't know the difference between a hand roll and a sushi roll, and was just rude enough to tell Jody that what she has was what she had ordered.  Also, at one point after the appetizers had arrived, I caught our servers' eye from across the room, a sure sign I wanted her to come over, especially since I had a what I suspect was a look on my face like "Um, something's wrong over here".  She walked back into the kitchen and we didn't see her again until the entrees arrived.


Jody: The prices were reasonable for a restaurant with decent service, but paying $1 for a soda refill was another blow to their score.In the end, I'm going to give them a score of 2 stars, mostly because the food was edible. 

Steve:      Like I said, I am very forgiving of a lot of things. But this was just too much.  I'm giving Green Tea 1.5 Stars, and again, that's because I liked the decor and the food was good.  The terrifying service destroyed this place otherwise.

Silliness: Bendy straw
Whipped cream, sprinkles & cherry


1 comment:

  1. That's a sad commentary. Sounds like the place has to work on both service and decor.

    ReplyDelete