Red, Hot & Ewww!!
Written: May 21 '02 (Updated May 21 '02)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: The price. There's not one close to where I live.
Cons: The service, the food, the management, they were all bad
The Bottom Line: Bad service, worse food, and worse yet management. Nothing good about this meal, except I didn't have to pay for it. Not recommended to anyone.
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| Doodlebug's Full Review: Red Hot & Blue |
A few weeks ago, my wife and I spent the weekend in Williamsburg, Va. We did the whole tourist thing, Busch Gardens, Mystery Dinner Theater, we even visited the old historic crap (her idea). On our first night in Williamsburg, we stopped by the front desk of our hotel, seeking information about local restaurants and entertainment. For supper, we were urged to try the "Memphis style bar-b-que" at Red, Hot & Blue. Looking back, I wish we had decided to ignore their advice, we could have eaten anywhere else and had a better experience. If this is what Memphis bar-b-que is all about, I feel sorry for those of you who live in Memphis.
Part 1: Getting A Table
When we entered Red, Hot & Blue, we left our names and were informed that there would a 20 minute wait. Fine by me, after all it WAS a Friday night in a tourist city, so a wait was to be expected. Besides, twenty minutes would give us ample time to check out the pictures of all the famous dead people hanging on the walls. Yee-Ha!!(note the sarcasm). Twenty minutes came and went, no big deal. Thirty minutes, again, no problem. But then a peculiar thing began to happen. A party of 2 who had arrived after us was seated, while we sat there waiting. A few minutes later, another party of 2 who had arrived after us was seated, and a few minutes after that, it happened again. I walked up to the hostess to inquire as to why we were being passed over for people who had clearly arrived well after us. She tried to say they had asked for the smoking section, and that was why they were seated before us. I explained that we had given no section preference, so we should have been seated first, no matter what section anyone else asked for. She called for the manager. The following is a quick re-cap of the conversation between the manager and myself:
Him: Yes, sir? Is there a problem?
Me: Yes, my wife and I have been here for about 40 minutes, and haven't been seated. However, 3 couples who came in after us have been seated. Oh yeah, and your hostess is a lying f-cking b-tch.
(he leaves to check the situation, then returns)
Him: Sir, they were seated first because we only had booths open. We were waiting to get you and your wife a table.
Me: Why wait for a table? A booth was fine with me.
Him: Well, we thought you would be more comfortable at a table.
Me: Oh, I get it. We couldn't have a booth because we're fat, is that right? You just assumed that two fat people can't fit in a f-cking booth, is that it? You passed us over because we weren't skinny, and the other people were?
After that, it's a blur. We argued for a bit, scared the hell out of him with threats of discrimination lawsuits, then argued some more. I'm sure we were a sight to behold.
After all that, and this is the weird part, when all had calmed down, we still decided to eat there (maybe I just wanted to annoy them with my presence). Let's move along to the food.
Part 2: The Food
After placing our order, the waitress returned with our drinks. If you've never had drinks at this place, trust me, it's a shock. Instead of two glasses full of soda, we were presented with two pitchers with straws sticking out of them. I immediately began to scan the other tables to see if this was a normal practice, or was this another "fat thing". Funny as it may sound, this was actually a normal thing. After what seemed to be an eternity, our long lost waitress showed up at our table with our two plates of food. My bar-b-que was what I should have expected, it tasted like the last few morsels scraped off the bottom at the end of the night. It was old, nasty, totally inedible. My meal also came with sausage that wasn't much better than the bar-b-que, and fries that were almost decent. My wife, she was even worse off than I was. Her ribs actually tasted like lighter fluid. I didn't believe it at first when she told me, but I tasted them, definetely lighter fluid. In the words of my dear wife, "Lighter fluid? EEWWWWWW!!" The same manager tried to claim that the ribs were cooked on a gas grill and couldn't possibly taste like lighter fluid, but funny thing, HE wouldn't try a bite to prove us wrong. And let me tell everyone reading these words, I've done enough grilling in my life to know the difference between "cooked with gas" and "splashed with lighter fluid". This was not a gas taste. I have never tasted such awful food, this was even worse than McDonalds.
Part 3: The Service
As I mentioned earlier, our waitress was missing in action for the majority of the evening. She was there to take our orders, she returned with our pitchers of soda, and returned once more to bring our plates. That was it. We didn't even see her walk past for the rest of the time we were there. I understand the place was pretty busy, but one would think the waitress would at least come by every now and then.
Part 4: The Price
Finally, I get to be positive about Red, Hot and Blue. After much argueing, and a whole lot of b-tching and complaining, we didn't have to pay for our "fine meal". Which was indeed a good thing, if I had paid anything more that $2.50 (for the soda), I would have felt like a victim of highway robbery. If we had paid, the meal would have been about $35-$40, a decent price if the meal had been prepared properly.
I can only hope that my experience at Red, Hot and Ewww was far from the normal dining experience. Everything about the meal was wrong. I cannot recommend this restaurant to anyone.
Recommended:
No
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Epinions.com ID:
Doodlebug
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Member: David
Location: Rocky Mount, NC
Reviews written: 69
Trusted by: 34 members
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