• 686 local color Saturday at the Valley Inn

    From MICHAEL LOO@1:123/140 to ALL on Thursday, July 18, 2019 06:59:04
    The ritual with these folks is to come here once a stay
    to feast on local fare and bask in the local folkways.
    Bonnie wisely decided to wait for the slavering family
    to clear out, so we were only four for dinner.

    It's a dimly lit taverny place, bar on one side dominating
    the front, two back rooms to accommodate overflow and
    events. We got there at 6 something, and the place was
    dead dead dead. The Internet suggests that service is
    friendly. It is, enough, but it was slow slow slow. The
    waitress didn't take drink orders until 15 minutes in,
    a potential loss of revenue, and the drinks, not rocket
    science, being a glass of house red, two Killianses, and
    a Blue Moon, took 15 more at least, a potential loss of
    customer satisfaction. Order-taking was almost half an
    hour later, and another 15 before salads and such came
    out. And then, wouldn't you know it, the mains appeared
    almost immediately thereafter. All of this with a smile.

    The salads were as far as I could tell unexceptionable
    and came with rolls from a brown'n'serve tray and
    breadsticks wrapped in cellophane. I asked for corn
    instead of salad, and it came a bit later, canned but
    reheated in butter so as to be quite nice.

    I had one of the daily blackboard specials, prime rib.
    I asked as usual for the rarest piece in the house, no
    jus, and the waitress had looked dubious and said, I'm
    not sure there is any rare left, and Bonnie said, this is
    upstate, there's never any rare. What came was bigger,
    better, rarer, tenderer, and tastier than at the Prime
    Rib Loft, which was by no means bad. It had been sous-vided
    to 100-110 and then finished in the oven after being
    brushed with black paint of the Kitchen Bouquet genre.
    It was maybe 20 oz boneless, and I took half back for later.
    For my side, I asked for spaghetti, which hd perked up the
    waitress just a bit. This was made-to-order but not al
    dente angel hair with a puckery tomato sauce much improved
    by a pat of butter from the bread basket.

    The others had got fried scallops, decent in the 21st
    century way, i.e., kind of tasteless, still juicy so fried
    pretty much right, out of a frozen bag; fried shrimp, also
    frozen commercial product, much tastier but also much
    weller done; and broiled haddock, which on one end was
    a bit overcooked and on the other crispy to burnt, though
    fresh enough. French fries all round for the ladies were
    reported as good.

    We passed on desserts, of which there were three, plain
    cheesecake being the most appealing. Instead, we went back
    for Jane's gingersnaps and chocolate chip cookies, quite
    good, heirloom recipes from her grandmother or great-aunt
    and the Nestle bag respectively.

    By the time we left, near 9, the bar had filled up and
    diners spilt over to one of the overflow rooms. Two
    waiters also had augmented our tired old (our age)
    waitress, so service became very fast. Who knew.
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