Post by Joe CanuckPost by JimAnyone read the scathing review in todays Citizen? It was quite good.
No, what do they say about the place?
http://www.canada.com/ottawa/ottawacitizen/news/citizensweekly/story.html?id=3ca34daa-9ae6-44d2-acaf-81ff0198805c
Grist for The Mill: '... the worst restaurant I have ever reviewed'
Anne DesBrisay
The Ottawa Citizen
Sunday, November 13, 2005
Inside this former gristmill that predates Confederation is a riverbank
restaurant everyone who lives in Ottawa knows about and anyone who has
ever taken a bus tour to Ottawa has likely visited. It is a place that
calls itself "one of Ottawa's most important landmarks both for its'
(sic) history and for it's (sic) fine cuisine."
It wasn't hunger for the newfangled that brought me to The Mill. I knew
well enough this roast beef and steakhouse would be serving "nostalgic"
dishes. Comfortably timeless in an appealingly gnarled-around-the-edges
sort of way, staffed with charming career waiters who deliver thick
slabs of rare beef and who can shake up a dry martini as readily as a
Shirley Temple. I went to this iconic restaurant, I suppose, looking for
the Ed's Warehouse of my Toronto childhood.
At least that's what I was hoping to find on my first visit. I went a
second time with as open a mind as I could muster. I made a third and
conclusive trip just to be certain I could safely tell you that The Mill
is the worst restaurant I have ever reviewed.
Where to begin? How about with the greeting. There isn't one. The first
thing you see are tacky paper signs, informing you of the proper use of
coupon books (No discount on the table d'hote) and The Mill's commitment
to the Kyoto Protocol. Yet a third notice warns against drinking while
pregnant. If that doesn't make you feel welcome, try having to go
looking for a host to seat you. I did just that. Twice. Three times I've
been invited (by a distracted, harried man) to hang up my own coat on
racks at the back.
The Mill's Kyoto commitment must explain why our table is in darkness.
For 15 minutes we can't even read the wine list, until a waiter shows up
to light the table lamp. At another meal, at a different table, half the
light bulbs above our booth are burned out.
The "fine cuisine" has infantile names. There's the "I'll Never Get a
Cold" prime rib (with garlic), the "Touch of Heaven" or "3 Is Not a
Crowd" prime rib (three colour peppercorns, see?) and the "Queen
Neptune's" chicken and shrimp.
Other dishes just seem nasty and confused. Who wants a starter of "baked
baguette stuffed with chicken and cheddar cheese, egg and onion, served
chilled"? Or "sweet and sour pork with red onion and baby corn served
with dutchesse (sic) potatoes"? Or a breaded chicken breast "stuffed
with salami and mozzarella cheese, topped with a light Maple au-jus,
served with rice." Maple and mozzarella? Really?
The Wild Game Special (no discount cards on wild game either) has a
starter of ground buffalo meat balls baked in a "red Currant and Tomato
sauce (sic)." Who dreams that up?
The shrimp in the cocktail are water logged, unseasoned, flavourless.
The soup of the day tastes of base and looks like plate scrapings. The
escargots are mushy, livery tasting, coated in what could only be jarred
garlic. The "horseradish lemon and orange zest sauce" with the
coconut-crusted shrimp seems to be no more than horseradish blended
(unhappily) with marmalade. And the $16 "appetizer combo" is a cocktail
glass of the same flaccid shrimp surrounded by rock hard, stone-cold,
over-battered, over-fried, mostly-squidless calamari. Scattered around
the so-called squid are sticks of fried zucchini, one-quarter vegetable,
three-quarter breading.
We ask if the salmon is fresh. Our waiter seems confused. "Well it used
to be fresh, but now it's frozen. Everything's frozen here." (I'm not
making this up.) We ask for clarity on the ingredients of the soup for
the sake of my companion's allergies. "I wouldn't risk it," replies our
waiter. "Could you check with the chef?" we ask sweetly. "He's gone
home," we are told. "He's made the soup and now he's gone home." It is
6.30 p.m., midweek and I'm about to order a $29 rack of lamb and the
chef's gone home.
The main point of The Mill should be the roast beef. I've tried it twice
(three times if you count the roast beef "Wellington style") and it is
flabby, tasteless and, in the case of the "Touch of Heaven" prime rib,
further debased with a hellish gluey brown sauce welded to its surface.
A single, sorry, grilled-to-death portobello mushroom rests on top, like
a spray on a coffin. You can smell the powdered base from across the
table.
A breast of duck suffers from another glutinous mushroom sauce. The long
grain and wild rice seems to have been cooked in a saline solution. A
side of asparagus (ordered a la carte) is carelessly tossed on top.
The filet mignon is a partial success. The meat is spilling out of the
limp bacon skirting and requires more chewing than you'd expect from
tenderloin, but it has a pleasant grill flavour and doesn't come with
anything you want to scrape off.
Carrots and broccoli round out every plate, every visit, dinner and
lunch. The carrots are undercooked, littered with raw garlic, and suffer
the tired look of vegetables prepped hours before and left to soak.
At lunch, the soup tasted like cream of MSG. We followed this with the
roast beef "Wellington-style" which comes well done only. Why was that?
Well, because it's wrapped in pastry and baked. "Actually," our waiter
whispers, "it's the chef's way of using up leftovers. But I shouldn't
say that." (I kid you not.) The whole ensemble, from the sorry pastry
with the rock hard edges, and the slabs of grey meat and bits of
mushroom within, was outrageous in its dreadfulness. This for $18.95.
The dessert menu is a laminated booklet with photographs of colourful
edible oil products. I asked if any dessert is made in house. "No, we
buy them, but then we fancy them up." Three words: chemical, artificial,
soul-less.
On average, the Mill marks up its wines 300 per cent, about 100 per cent
more than most restaurants do. A nice bottle of wine may be the only way
to swallow this food, but then it will add significantly to the bottom
line of a Mill dinner.
And the service? Orders were confused, side dishes forgotten, plates
removed at whim, a bill was received that included eight items we never
ordered. The service wasn't rude. It was just banquet-hall amateur.
One last thing: the washrooms. They smell of old train station. At our
first visit, two stalls in the women's room were "out of order;" a third
was missing a lock, a fourth a privacy wall. Plaster is peeling, the
soap dispenser leaks. Two weeks later, at my final visit, nothing had
changed, been cleaned or repaired. The "Out Of Order" signs just looked
tired.
You get the sinking feeling that nobody here cares, that this is a
restaurant attempting to make as much money for as little effort as
possible. Really, truly, I can't warn you away enough.