Ho, hum..... our dinner experience last night was not the best.
Sequoia usually does its own food (and laid on a very good Christmas lunch last year), but for this Thanksgiving week they had got in outside caterers (a Vancouver-based outfit called Culinary Capers - not sure how the heck that came about!).
Now, I appreciate the difficulties of catering to a big holiday crowd, particularly in a fairly small - and unfamiliar - space. But, really, these folks did seem quite overwhelmed by the logistics of the event - lots of goodwill, but fairly little actual service.
The food was nice enough when it eventually arrived (well, except for the fact that my main course was stone cold). But the portions were niggardly. Really - the one thing you do not want from a Thanksgiving Dinner is to go away still hungry!
I'd had my anxieties beforehand (but my companions had dithered so long about whether they wanted to do anything or not, that this was our only option - the only venue that hadn't completely booked out at least one week ahead): it was, after all, conspicuously the cheapest Thanksgiving deal on offer in town this year. However, if you're looking to trim your costs, it seems to me to be a false economy to scrimp on your ingredients (I mean, vegetables here are ridiculously cheap; and even the imported turkey isn't that expensive - Sequoia proprietor Frank Siegel has always managed to provide a pretty decent plateful of meat at previous Christmas and Thanksgiving events at a similar or lower price). The paltry dollop of mashed potato on each plate was, in some cases, barely more than a single forkful. A small piece of yam and a tiny piece of carrot completed the miserly allocation of vegetables. Very disappointing indeed. (I cleared my plate in about 2 minutes flat, and was almost immediately thinking about where the nearest place I could load up on rou chuanr was.) I doubt if many people who came last night will be in any hurry to sample their catering again.
And I need to start thinking about my Christmas options.....
3 comments:
To be fair, I thought the food was actually pretty good - though, yes, perhaps not as warm as one might have wanted. There just wasn't much of it. Any meal that leaves me unfulfilled, portions-wise...
As Froog says, the purpose of Thanksgiving is utter gluttony. I'll admit my plate wass less than underfilled. Turkey, prime rib, stuffing, Auntie F's unbelievable mashed taters, all the fixin's, and topped off with apple pie and cheesecake.
All washed down with much spiffing red wine.
Bastard - I hate you, Cowboy.
Well, not really, but you know what I mean.
B - everybody knows that halflings have prodigious appetites. Of course you were unfulfilled!
Sorry, anyway.
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