Every year I take my best friend out for his birthday. We typically go for Middle Eastern food, but that day we were in the neighborhood and he suggested we check out this new (to us) pub. We came in at 2:00 p.m. on a Sunday. The restaurant was close to, if not a bit over, half way filled. There was one (1) server on the floor taking tables! Ummmm...I don't know if this was a off day (meaning they typically are not that busy on Sundays at that time of day), if someone called in sick, or if they usually only have one server on, but for whatever reason there was one server on, and service was horrendous.
At this point I must say that the server interaction (when she had time to actually stop by the table) was okay, and had hints that it would have been great if she wasn't so overwhelmed, and I almost gave two (2) stars because of that, but alas I could not. I've worked in the industry long enough to know that she could have spoken up from across the room to say, "Everything good guys," or something like that. Anything would have been better than to be ignored for as long and as many times as we were. But, I do concede that having her alone on the floor with just one bartender couldn't have been easy.
That being said, our server didn't come to us for over 10 minutes. If it wasn't for the fact that we were "celebrating" my dude's bday I would have been out like a scout on a new route. But, because we were kicking it, I tried to remain as calm as possible. After she finally came over she procured our drink order, which took nearly another 10 minutes to arrive. She couldn't even stay to take our order. When she returned (another 8 minutes or so) she took our order. Those of you reading a Cosimo review for the first time may not be aware, but when I go out, especially somewhere new, I order a lot of things off of the menu in order to give the place as thorough of a review as possible. So, we ordered a Cheeseburger, Cajun Grouper, Chicken Quesadillas, Hot Soft Pretzels, Fried Cauliflower, Potato Skins, and Fish Tacos. Before she vanished into the bowels of the edifice, not to be seen or heard from for another 10-15 minutes, I instructed the server to bring out the dishes as they became available from the kitchen, and NOT to worry about bringing them out together. Did she do that? No. No she did not.
After having ordered our two-man feast the only thing we saw resembling our sever was a black blur rushing to-and-fro throughout the establishment. She did not return for just over 40 minutes. Forty. Fucking. Minutes. I don't care HOW busy you are, you at least walk by and say, "Need anything? Go fuck yourselves," every 12-15 minutes! But whatevs. We received our food, and as my photos will surely suggest, everything looked dope; however, whoever said a picture is worth a thousand words was an idiot, because while the photos I took look good (don't hate), the food was most certainly not.
The pretzels, while hot, were deep fried and had so much salt on it, eating it was like swallowing a deep fried salt lick, and while I may have ordered enough food for an elephant, my friend and I are most certainly not elephants. And the spread that came with it? All you could taste was spiciness and MAYBE a hint of mustard. I had hoped for homemade pretzels, but they were obviously frozen and fried, so it was a disappointment.
Also a disappointment of the wholesale bought variety was the cauliflower. Again, what could have been an easy win was another let down, because of the obvious frozen cauliflower deep fried to shit. It was the 3rd most tolerable dish, but still not worth the time waiting, the money or the calories.
The potato skins, surprise surprise, was another frozen dish deep fried to holy hell. Again, homemade skins is such an easy thing for restaurants to make, and I couldn't believe they missed the ball on this. Topping frozen food, which is deep fried way too long, with fresh ingredients (scallions and diced tomato) does NOT make this dish homemade. It make it laughable and infuriating at the same time.
The Fish Tacos was another huge let down. I've avoided fish tacos for years until very recently, where I had a string of great fish tacos at a few locations (reviews to come), but Jake's tasted exactly how I expected fish tacos to taste when I avoided them for so long. And the cook left plastic of some sort on the bottom of one of the soft tortilla. YUCK!
The Chicken Quesadilla was decent. The best I can say is that it was better than Taco Bell, but NOT as good as the one I recently had at Emagine Theater. If you're a restaurant and can't beat a movie theater's version of food, you've got issues.
The burger came about 15 minutes after everything else. The server said she didn't forget to put that order in, but there's no way that's true. It doesn't take an hour to cook a MR burger.
My boy said the Grouper was okay at best, so what does all this mean. Stay away from here! read more