The dead flies in the front window should have been a tip off.
We were in Brooksville to visit some friends this past week and we were thrilled when they told us that there was a little market in town and that we wouldn't have to drive to Blue Hill for a late lunch.
When we arrived at the market around 2pm, the place was dead and our options were extremely limited. Now, I don't have a problem with a cold sandwich and a bag of chips, especially on a hot day, but the lack of choice was ridiculous. My husband claimed the last BLT with cheese, which left tuna or egg salad for my son and corned beef for me. When I asked if we could get a sandwich made to order, since it was so slow and the options were so limited, I was told that we couldn't, since the people who make the sandwiches had left for the day, and "what {I saw was} what there {was}." Also, when I asked if they had anymore Coke, since the slot next to the diet coke in the cooler was empty, I was told that they didn't- I've never heard of even the tiniest, most rural market running out of coke.
When I went to pay for the food, I was greatly annoyed that I was ignored. The older, red-headed woman who was working behind the counter was talking to the couple in front of us, who had already paid for their groceries. She was regaling them with the details of some surgery she'd had and instead of asking them to wait a minute while she rung us through, she kept talking to them for another three minutes (according to the inaccurate clock on the wall above the pastries), before they said their good byes. She didn't even apologize for keeping us waiting, just rang us through and told us, curtly, how much we owed.
Which in and of itself was ridiculous. My husband's sandwich was $7.50, for three small, rubbery pieces of bacon, low quality turkey, soggy bread and slimy lettuce and tomato (when was it even made? There's no way it had been made fresh that day). My son's and my sandwiches were both $6.50 and with chips and drinks the whole meal rang in at around $32.00- too much for what we actually got, both quantity and quality wise.
When we went to sit down, the inside area was disgusting. There were bits of muffins and chips all over the floor and more crumbs on the table, along with smears of what I think were mayo or fish chowder. We mentioned it to the woman behind the counter and, rather than cleaning it or apologizing for the mess, she said something about kids from the yacht club down the road and pointed out the tables outside- which turned out to be equally gross. They had what I hope was melted chocolate ice cream smeared on them, and the floor underneath was greasy from crushed potato chips. For a place that was so dead, you'd think they could have cleaned a little, or at least apologized for it.
When we finally ate our food- after walking down the road to a tiny beach by the yacht club, my son was in for a nasty surprise- he bit into his egg salad sandwich to find a dead bug in it (I thought it was a fly, but my husband thinks it was a yellow jacket- either way, ick). There was no way for the bug to have flown into the sandwich, so it had to have been in or on the egg salad when the top piece of bread was put on. Not only does that show that whoever made the sandwich wasn't paying attention, but that the food prep area isn't clean, if there are bugs in and around it. Again, the dead flies in the front window should have alerted us to this, but I just assumed that since it is summer in Maine that bugs happen...
Needless to say, this discovery put us off our sandwiches, so we finished our drinks and chips and returned to out car.
We greatly improved the entire situation by throwing our sandwiches out and driving to Blue Hill (which we had hoped to avoid in the first place, since there's a roundabout at the top of the hill which nobody seemed to know how to use) and getting frozen yogurt at a Sweet-Frog style place across from the grocery store.
Next time we're in the area we'll be sure to drive straight by this market on our way to Blue Hill...
(PS- "The Terrible T's" photos of the food happen to be the same as some of the ones on their FB page and show food being prepared- which there is no way a normal customer would get to see, as the kitchen is somewhere in the back... clearly their verbose, 5-star review was written by an employee... Maybe if they put as much effort into the quality of the food and the upkeep of the place, then they could get actual 5-star reviews, instead of having to manufacture them...) read more
