Wine-N-Diner – Albany, NY [Take 2]
You can read all about our first visit to this restaurant here. (My opinion is in the comments)
For some reason, we thought going back for brunch might be a more fortuitous experience. I’m going to preface this story by summarizing that this trip was one of the worst dining experience I’ve ever had. And of course, you know it went down in epic style. Here goes nothing:
Wine-N-Diner is located at 544 Delaware Avenue in Albany, NY. The ambiance is very new age artistic bordering on pretentious. The bathrooms do have some humorous murals on the wall that incorporate with the components in the room. We were pulled away from our table by the proprietor almost at gunpoint to see these murals.
Onto the food…
If I see that a breakfast establishment offers feta cheese as an omelet component, I automatically default to wanting an omelet with bacon and feta cheese. In this case, I ordered the “Potato, Bacon and Cheddar Omelet” and asked if I may substitute feta for the cheddar. Cassie ordered just the Potato, Bacon, and Cheddar Omelet with no substitution. Also, for the sake of the blog and because I am a fat kid, we decided to also order the Texas Toast. It was a lot of food, but I wanted to have some substance for this blog post (aside: I really did have high hopes!).
While we were waiting for our food, the proprietor came over to our table and stuck his greasy cell phone in our faces and said, “you gotta see this.” We’re straining to see what he’s trying to show us; it is an image with a bunch of bins. “Cupcake bar – here – every Sunday,” the young man tells us, as he flips to the next image which was a cupcake above the same bins, which contained toppings for the cupcakes. He explained it to us further, and we tried to share in his excitement, but it was tough because we were hungry!
Just so I can reasonably plead to maintain my sanity for now, here is a list of some of the omelet selections (as named on the menu above, click to enlarge):
- Greek Omelet (Tomato, Feta, & Spinach)
- Potato, Bacon, and Cheddar Omelet
- Tomato, Bacon, and Cheese Omelet
- Wild Western Omelet (Onions, Peppers, Hot Ham, Cheddar)
Unbeknownst to Cassie and me, if you order any of the above four omelets, you are guaranteed to have tomato inside as a special bonus. Don’t believe me? Here’s what my Potato, Bacon, and Cheddar Feta omelet looked like:
In both of our omelets, there were an obscene amount of finely chopped tomatoes. For me, I’m just picky against tomatoes. They never add anything to a dish, and make an omelet absolutely disgusting. Cassie, on the other hand, is allergic to tomatoes. Had she known they were going to be cute and add tomato to the omelet, she would not have ordered it. If you intend on putting tomato into every omelet choice, you need to indicate this on the menu. I know I’m not crazy because there are multiple items that specify tomatoes as a special item in select omelets.
When the server came back, Cassie nicely explained that she has a tomato allergy. The server grabbed the plate and said, “do you want him to make something else?” Cassie responded no, planning to eat the Texas Toast. That was the most of an admission of a mistake as we got, no apology. Had we not had the foresight to order extra food, Cassie would have sat there while they re-prepared her meal. This scenario makes me a little nervous.
The proprietor, who was quick to promote his business earlier in the experience, did absolutely nothing to fix his kitchen’s problem. As a matter of fact, the proprietor didn’t even look in our direction or wish us a nice day on our way out. Luckily they had taken the item Cassie sent back off of the bill. We paid, left, and are never going back.
You can find Wine-N-Diner at http://wine-n-diner.com/, but why you’d want to is beyond me. If you go, don’t say I didn’t warn you.
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