(photo © kiwidutch)
After our bizarre Satellite Navigation Scenic Route arrival, we are at Friendly’s Restaurant in West Hartford, Connecticut. Our friends who live in Pennsylvania love their local Friendly’s so their kids are very excited about eating here tonight.
For the Kiwidutch Clan, this restaurant chain is unknown to us so we are going on another dining adventure.
We do have one dilemma, Mr. Four is seriously sleepy after his big day at the Children’s Museum, so we order a simple side order of a few vegetables and add a sausage to it for him and ask the Staff if it might be at all possible to get it some extra attention in the kitchen so that it might arrive before he gets too impossibly tired to eat it. They assure us that they will look into it…
Famous Last Words… after 25 minutes Mr. Four is snuggling up on his Papa’s lap in pre-sleep mode so I go up to the kitchen/reception and ask nicely if his Child’s meal is anywhere in sight… again, they say they will look into it.
Almost 20 minutes later food starts arriving on the table, to my consternation Mr. Four’s meal is still nowhere in sight even as the other kids meals have been served. So much for trying their hardest to help us out. The Little Man himself has in the few last minutes totally lost his battle with wakefulness and is now asleep on his Father’s shoulder… luckily there is a bench seat right next to us and the restaurant is now more than 80% empty so he sleeps stretched out there as the rest of us eat.
Kid number one has “Cheeseburger Sliders” … mini cheeseburgers served with waffle fries, pickle chips, mustard and ketchup.
(photo © kiwidutch)
Kid number two goes for “Dippin’ Chicken”… Chicken fingers with honey mustard, ketchup and BBQ sauce, with fries or side…
(photo © kiwidutch)
Kid number two follows up the main course with a ” Build your own Vol-Cone-O Sundae” for dessert… before and after shots of the decorating process…
(photo © kiwidutch)
(photo © kiwidutch)
I order the Chicken Strips Basket…
(photo © kiwidutch)
One of our friends orders the Clamboat Basket…
(photo © kiwidutch)
The other orders New England Fish ‘n Chips…
(photo © kiwidutch)
Hubby goes for a Buffalo Bleu Burger
(photo © kiwidutch)
Forbidden Chocolate Sundae for dessert…
other Kid desserts…
(photo © kiwidutch)
Everyone is starving and so pleased to finially eat, but in the end I have to be honest and say that this meal wasn’t particularly wonderful…. it’s fairly much bog standard food, ok but not outstanding in any particular way. More a “fill-a-gap” meal.
I was also disappointed with the fact that although we arrived after the usual meal time rush hour, and the restaurant is vastly more empty than full, it has taken 45 minutes for food to arrive, and that a small and hopefully simple request to staff for one single side order of vegetables with a sausage on the side for a very tired little boy could not be delivered for closer to 50 minutes.
The poor poppet just couldn’t hold out that long so went to sleep hungry and I feel bad for him. How long should it take to make the meal in the following photo? surely not 50 minutes. ( The missing segment of sausage was eaten by the 1 year old in our party who has been sleeping all afternoon and was wide awake in the restaurant)
(photo © kiwidutch)
My daughter ordered a dessert thinking that it had chocolate cookies, but it was in fact peanut butter cookies… both my kids detest peanuts and peanut butter with a vengeance so once she has tasted the first bite and realised this fact, she is in tears with disappointment. Then she discovers the icecream flavour is a different flavout than she thought too. We are not great consumers of ice-cream so my kids are very much into the the simple basic, ” vanilla/strawberry/chocolate ” varieties, pistachio or whatever other flavour it was, was a step too radical for her…
(photo © kiwidutch)
Himself gallantly come to her rescue offering to eat her dessert or her, while I go to the front desk and order a small single scoop ice-cream in a cone to replace her ice-cream mis-selection…. the lady looks puzzled since she has just delivered a dessert for said kid… I explain our predicament and she cheerfully hands me the small cone and tells me it’s on the house.
I must say that this last action tipped the balance between this place getting a tip or no tip tonight. For so-so-ish food and ridiculous slowness during a non busy time of service, and seemingly indifferent staff, I was getting ready to forget the tip and give the place a very low rating indeed. The small act of kindness showed to my daughter made up somewhat for the fact that my poor son missed out on a meal completely and showed me that maybe tonight’s blunders were more the fault of the kitchen than of the serving staff.
We left a modest tip as a compromise and our friends assured us that their local Friendly’s usually served them inside 15 minutes and the food was better too. They did laughingly mention one point..” we go to a Friendly’s more for the ice-cream than for the meals” .. . it was a very telling remark… now that I have evaluated the food, I think it shows and that they are right.
I’d rate this Friendly’s a 4 out of 10 for food and probably a 6/10 for the ice-cream, if they hadn’t gone the extra mile on Daughters dessert I think I would have been tougher and given it a 3 out of 10.
Since our friends love their local outlet, I don’t wish to tar all member’s of a Restaurant chain with the same brush, but I will say that I think this particular Friendly’s let’s the side down.
Another small consolation is that at least we don’t take the long way home.. the small distance back to our hotel is covered in a few minutes and our soundly sleeping boy is transfered to his bed…
(photo © kiwidutch)
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