stay in the shallow end

Friday (3/21): Dinner at Continental Divide: My experience at Continental Divide this Friday night made me sad. I wasn’t angry, upset, or pissed off… just sad. Since I moved to Charlottesville nearly five years ago, Continental Divide has been my favorite restaurant in town. I’ve blogged about it here and here and here and here and here and here and I’ve never had anything bad to say. I’ve kept quiet as the service and food quality has slowly deteriorated over the last couple of years. As time has progressed, I started going back less and less. All the while, though, I still maintained that it’s my favorite restaurant in town.

Of course the service has never been stellar, and I understand that their attitude is part of their schtick. While they’ve always maintained this attitude, they were never rude or dismissive until today. Our experience started when Kate, Jeremy, Tasha, and I walked in and put our name down. As usual, they told us how many people were ahead of us, but didn’t mention a time (which I actually appreciate). I went to the bar to get drinks for us. I then waited, waited, and waited. It wasn’t that the bartender didn’t see me, I really felt like I was being ignored. She was definitely avoiding eye contact. At one point she stopped, had a few drags off another customer’s cigarette and was talking while she looked up and down the bar, scanning right over me. When I was finally able to get her attention, I placed our order: two margaritas, grapefruit and vodka, and a beer. She took the order, continued down the bar and took another order, and then made their drinks before ours. I was dumbfounded. When she finally got to our drinks, she brought three drinks over and walked off. I delivered the three drinks, came back, and she informed me that they don’t have grapefruit juice. I consulted with Tasha and asked for orange juice instead. The bartender then proceeded to make the drink with pineapple juice. Whatever. I took the drink, put down a credit card, and waited around for a receipt. It never came, so I just left my card at the bar and rejoined my party.

I informed the hostess that we had additional friends coming, so we would like a booth, and she made a note of it. When a table freed up while we were in the bathroom, she went to seat my friends at the table, and then I got back and told them that my friends were coming (I hadn’t told them earlier), and we had to get up and wait again. This was totally my bad.

When we finally get a table, things improved, but not by much. Since Continental Divide always runs out of specials, I make it a point to ask the server from the get-go if they are all available. She checks with the kitchen and says they are. Two members of our party order one of the specials, and of course, they were out of them. Grrrr. Strike one. Next, one of our appetizers never shows up. (To their credit, it wasn’t on the check, either). Normally I’d have asked about them, but we never saw our server between our appetizer coming out and the entrees coming out. Finally, when it was all said and done, we sat around waiting for a check forever while our server was sitting a couple booths over doing closing work. At that point we just wanted to get out of there.

As always, the food was good, but Continental Divide has become more trouble than it’s worth. I hereby revoke the favorite restaurant designation I had bestowed upon them. Unfortunately, I don’t know what will take its place.

And now, here’s Jeremy’s review. Lacking the affection I have developed for Continental Divide, his review doesn’t pull any punches:

Anoop took me on a culinary whirlwind tour of Charlottesville. Our Friday night eats were at the Continental Divide.

Good thing(s) (tasty food):
1). I got the bean and cheese burrito which was extremely tasty. The beans didn’t overpower it as they often do. Anoop got the Thai Chicken burritos which were absolutely delicious. I think I ate almost a whole one of his without really asking. The roasted pepper quesadilla was a tasty appetizer. That was one of three appetizers we ordered.

Bad things (everything else):

1). Second app : red hot blues. For these, they substituted normal chips for the spicy chips. The nachos were bland. I have not had these nachos before, but I would compare them to what you might get at Applebees minus whatever deliciousness Applebees could possibly add. Bland bland bland.

2). Third app: hummus. I dunno how it was, because it never came.

3). We asked the hostess what the specials were when she sat us and had her double check nothing was out. All in. Yay! There was a tasty tasty sounding carne azada special. This sounded delicious. They were, of course, out of it when we tried to order it. Missing things seem to be a theme at this establishment. Let me jump in the way back machine…

4). Let me start back to when we first arrived. I know, this review is all out of sorts but that’s the kind of meal it was.

We got there and had to wait. Understandable. Anoop decides to get us some drinks from the bar. Well, he tried to get us some drinks. For a good five minutes. I watched as he seemingly got ignored. The bar was mostly full, and I get that sometimes you just have to make eye contact. However, anyone that knows Anoop knows that this is not an issue for him. Unless someone is (seemingly) blatantly ignoring him. He gives it another solid effort and finally makes eye contact. 2 margaritas, a beer and a vodka and grapefruit juice. I shit-you-not the waitress proceeds to take orders and fill them for other customers before getting to Anoop’s drinks. I’ve seen some sorry-ass bartending and have had my share of being ignored, but this got to the point that you feel that the bartender is offended by some aspect of our party. It is most likely simple incompetence. Extremely simple. But it was such astounding incompetence . Uncomfortable. The Office awkward. The British one. Mouth agape.

After filling other people’s orders and taking a few drags off someone’s cigarette breaks she finally brings the drinks. Well, 3 of them anyway. She’s out of grapefruit juice. We ask for OJ instead. 5 minutes later (after taking and filling some more orders) she brings a pineapple and vodka. Whatever. Anoop gives her his credit card and asks to close out. She grabs it, takes some more orders and doesn’t come back. I feel karma telling me to steal something since they are taking a little part of my soul. I resist.

5). Meanwhile our seating situation is confused. We finally get a table, but Anoop has additional people coming that the rest of the party was unaware of. We pass up our table (sniff) and request a booth. A two top proceeds to get seated right in front of us in a booth while a 2 top table is available. I want another drink. I think better of it.

6). Back to the future. My Calvin Klein underwear is getting in a bunch while 3 of our table’s waters sit empty for over 10 minutes.

7). We ask for our check and watch as our waitress does closing work for a little while before finally calculating our tab. I beg anoop not to tip as much as he is about to. He is too generous.

So was the food good? The food was great. Would I ever go back? Hell and no.