I want to give Poke Stop a higher score, I really do. Yelpers, I HAVE to agree with Dave N. when he says, "Are the Owners working?...you may find that the quality of food is very inconsistent."
Whoo...great way to start a review. Ne? Let's get down and dirty.
First off, yes, this restaurant was featured on Food Network's "Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives." But is it up to par with the majority of the restaurants featured on the show? It has the potential to be...so the answer currently is no.
So its famous, yay. That means many more potential customers may frequent the restaurant. But there is a big reason why this place isn't rated the 4 to 4.5 stars that it should be!! I'm gonna quote Dave again (awesome review dude!), "I'm not sure if the staff don't care about the quality of the food they produce or if they are just not capable of preparing the food at an acceptable level."
When my girlfriend and I went there on Friday (October 7th, 2011) at around 12:30 - 1;00 pm ~ ish, our gamble on the food quality was NOT a winner. There was about 4 workers (it looked like 2 cooks and 2 counter people) on staff. One of the counter people, the girl, took our order. A "Surf and Turf" (Kalbi and GARLIC Shrimp [more on this real soon!] and a crab cake burger combo.
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Before I move on to the bloody, beefy, hearty depth of my experience, let me tell you about some of the food that I had that was GOOD and fairly consistent (because some of it is hard to mess up...even if a cook wanted to try [hint: subliminal message]).
1. Fried Poke Bowl on Pipikaula fried rice. Hoooly --insert expletive-- batman! Deeeelicious.
2. Deconstructed Sushi Bowl. Also very good. Lots of seafood and a whole shrimp to top it off.
3. Eggplant fries. Healthier than its potato-based relative? Probably not. But just as good and makes you "feel" like you're eating guiltless. So by that rationale, yes, it is healthy.
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Okay, so on with the drama (Ooo! We love drama!)!
Our food felt like it took forever. The girl who took our order had gone on break (I think). Not that that was the problem.
After a few other customers left who I think were tourists coming to the restaurant because of its "claim to fame" on Food Network, the cook comes out from behind the grill top and starts dropping "F-bombs" right in front of the customers talking to the other counter person about how peculiar the tourist guy was about his food.
Meanwhile, we had gotten our food. My girlfriend's crab cake burger wasn't anything like we had imagined. It was a crab cake...on a hamburger patty. A little, over fried nugget of a crab cake. Her combo meal was almost $10 and she gets a sliver of a burger with a silver dollar-sized, dry crab cake. Oh, taro bun, lettuce, tomato, sauce, onion, side of eggplant fries and a drink too. All in all, she wasn't satisfied.
On to mine. The surf and turf features grilled boneless korean kalbi, jumbo garlic shrimp, rice, and potato or tossed greens salad. My kalbi was charred (I like charred) but on the plate is just looked awful. Like I got the ends or something. Also, were they supposed to be seasoned? It tasted great (because short ribs have all that fatty goodness) but I swear I tasted no seasoning whatsoever.
Next, the shrimp. I thought I was going to get some of the garlic jumbo shrimp in the cooler. Well, I got 4 head-on (not that I mind that, the head is the best part!) smaller shrimp, like the one used for the deconstructed sushi bowl. That was fine but again...IT WASN'T SEASONED! It was basically grilled shrimp. Plain grilled shrimp.
I ate it all. I was hungry even after I finished my plate. I didn't want to say anything because that cook earlier was having a hissy fit with his co-worker about some tourist who will never come back because they don't live here! I didn't want to make him more mad. I've worked with people like him before. If he is like them, they make life at the restaurant terrible.
I hope whoever that was gets at least a reprimand for what he did and said to his co-workers and in front of the customers. It's actions like that that can ruin a great reputation and lose customers. I don't want someone who doesn't care about food quality even prepping my food. Let alone work with RAW fish. Who knows what evil they are capable that can end a business.
I don't care if he was "only joking" or "didn't mean it," I didn't take it that way. It was unsettling to see that and made me and my girlfriend eat food that we would normally go up and ask about because it wasn't to the quality of the menu board.
Poke Stop you're better than this. I know you are. Yelpers, go for the poke bowls. At least it's hard for the cook to mess those up. read more