Hunter's: Food, And Lots Of It. Eventually.
Posted in Personal Miscellany
on August 11th, 2009 by
Stephen DeGrace
Topics:
Reviews,
Food and Restaurants
Hunter's Ale House in Charlottetown has the advertising catch phrase "Great food, great rock, and lots of it." Well, the rock is all right, but I'll definitely never go there for the food again.
Me and Matt went there for dinner last Friday around 6pm. The place was packed... for no rational reason I can see, Hunter's is extremely popular. Waiting was definitely the theme of the evening. On the plus side, the servers were very good, and there was also good bilingual service, a must since every table around us seemed to be occupied by francophone tourists and some of them apparently had a hard time with English.
But they plainly didn't have enough staff either waiting tables or in the kitchen... especially in the kitchen. People were waiting upwards of twenty minutes for a table first of all, but you could forgive that for a popular joint. Where Hunter's really fell down was in the extremely long waits to get your food, and then get your bill and the pay after. You spend way too much time waiting and not enough time eating.
I ordered the 5 oz steak open face sandwich with fries and Matt got a club sandwich with fries. I also ordered onion rings off the appetizers menu, thinking I might, oh, I don't know, get it as an appetizer in case I was hungry waiting for my meal. Well, my onion rings arrived with my meal, at least 30 minutes later, probably more. For that type of restaurant, that's a bloody long wait twiddling your thumbs.
While we were waiting, a French group came and sat by us. They were having trouble with English and were promptly offered French service which they duly received. They were told that the kitchen was backed up and they would be waiting a solid hour for their food - so we even got lucky! That group just got up and left to go to Piazza Joe's.
When the food came, it was all right. Just all right. I mean, it was food. For a place like that I expected to be wowed by the steak, even given that I ordered a really small one, but I really wasn't. I could do a steak that good at home, and I'm not all that great at steaks. In contrast, if you order a steak at the Dublin you get a pretty mean steak compared to what you get at Hunter's. I've always been quite satisfied at the Dublin. Most of the items on the menu at Hunter's are quite expensive, and after my experience with the less expensive items, I won't be trying the expensive stuff any time soon. Or ever. At least the gravy was good.
One thing they lived up to: there was a lot of food, at least as far as the fries and onion rings goes. But I honestly would have been way more satisfied if I had a half or a third as many fries but got them in half or a third the amount of time it took.
Like I say the wait staff were wonderful, and full points for great bilingual service, which is something you don't see extremely often so it really stands out. But they were obviously overworked, and it was another round of long waits to get the bills, then to wait to pay them.
The Verdict:
Go for the rock. Do yourself a favour and don't go to Hunter's for the food. Next time I have an urge for pub food I'm going to hit Churchill or the Dublin.
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