I took my oldest two kids - son 34, daughter 28 - to On Tap as part of Colonie Restaurant Week. It was not a completely successful endeavor.
My kids found the place w/o memorable difficulty, so maybe it was just me, but I thought the restaurant inadequately marked. It's in the same building as The Holiday Inn Express at the SW corner of the intersection of 9R and Old Loudon Road, at the south end, right before a lounge called The Gazebo (which may be an associated entity, I couldn't tell), but I saw no sign announcing On Tap; I actually had to ask directions at the hotel.
Whatever. My kids were there when I arrived, it was a sports bar kind of place, reasonably busy for an early Thursday evening, the opening day of the NCAAs Round of 64. Credit where credit is due, the acoustics weren't bad, given the time and the place, and we had little difficulty communicating during the course of the meal.
Our waitress came over promptly after I sat down. I apologize for not remembering her name, but she was young, attractive, and efficient. My dissatisfaction with our experience had little to do with her.
Patrons ordering as part of Colonie Restaurant Week had a limited menu. As appetizers my son and I had the Bacon Bisque Soup. It was reasonably good, thick with good flavor, it finished with a sweetness I found a bit off-putting, but my son and daughter registered no objections. My daughter had the bruschetta, which was really quite delicious, thinly sliced cheese and meats on crusty, toasted Italian bread, with a savory mixture including tomatoes, basil and garlic, an altogether memorable opening to our entrees.
The entrees, however, were a failure. My daughter's lobster roll was passable, there was an adequate amount of tasty lobster meat, but the roll was unmemorable, something I'd expect from a commercial bakery at a supermarket. The lobster roll, however, was far superior to the "14 ounce rib eye steaks" my son and I ordered. The steaks came so quickly after our appetizers that we should have been alert to the idea that they had not been cooked anywhere near the medium rare we had both requested. Some of the meat was pink, but most of it was cool and blood red, giving rise to a question as to whether parts of the meat had been under fire at all. Moreover, both portions of the meat, mine and my son's, were incredibly fatty; about a third of mine was so laced with fat and gristle - and so undercooked - that I just cut it off and didn't bother with it. I tried a couple mouthfuls of the remainder, as did my son, but most of it we just packed up and brought home to toss in stew - not that third alluded to above, though, that would've just ruined the stew.
I'll take some of the blame here. If you want to get good food at a restaurant, you have to be a good customer, and I wasn't. I didn't request the waitress take the steaks back to the kitchen or otherwise indicate the significance of my displeasure. That's on me. The fact that my son and I were displeased was there for my waitress to see, but she was busy and there was nothing stopping us from articulating our displeasure. Instead, we packed up the meat me thought we could save and our desserts (two pedestrian slices of cheesecake and an equally blah lava cake) and went home. It was a Restaurant Week Special that we lost; that's OK, but it's hardly the Crime of The Century - or even The Week - I just do wish that we'd been a bit more assertive. read more