Cougar Cry
Page 5
Restaurant Reviews
Culture here? Shocking. Burn the place down!
The Coffee Tavern Review
By; The Anonymous Professor
I'm not sure I can actually call this a restaurant review;
after all, The Coffee Tavern at West Park is not really a
restaurant. Really. Oh, it serves food and drinks, and it
is filled with tables and chairs, a place to order and pay
and another to pick up, and a countertop with straws and
napkins just like a restaurant, so why shouldn't it be a
restaurant? Sometimes it is. Lunch, for instance, is
quite normal. You stand in line with three or four others
pouring over the changes in the menu, then go up and
order the daily special (perhaps half a honey-ham sand
wich and a cup of chili with iced tea on the side for $5) or
one of the half dozen or so sandwiches (including a new
reuben, the aforementioned honey-ham, an Italian roast-
beef with blue cheese-- my favorite, a super-serious
"grilled cheese," and even a pb&j "uncrustable"); add a
cold coke in the bottle and a snack-size bag of chips or
a cup of soup, and you've got a great meal for under
$10. But if you're just coming for lunch, as wonderful as
it is, then you're missing the whole point.
How do you "get the point"? For one thing, you stay
when you come. The atmosphere demands it. The
great red and black couches literally beg to cushion you
as you wade through Hatley's Holocaust reading. The
solid, empty-top tables - no crowd of salt-and-pepper,
ketchup, and aspartame here - are meant to have Pre-
Calc spread upon them, eraser dust, drops of hot choco
late, and little crumbs of coffee torte mingling with your
frustration. The soothing music inside or the even more
soothing river just under the spacious deck (with plenty
of benches and tables as well) clash so effectively with
the over abundance of caffeine that the two together can
center even the most frazzled of Tamara Grayson's or
Kimrey Jordan's artists.
And what about the art? Don't worry, it's here. For
those of discriminating culinary tastes, easily the best
pastries - from the coffee torte to the key lime tart,
strawberry and blueberry danishes, seven-layer bars,
turtle cheesecakes (cheesecake heaven for sure), and
the sweetest little creme brulee ~ can be had fresh on a
daily basis, and most days also provide an abundance of
fresh baked breads in a number of styles most certainly
new to the Wilkes area. And beyond this sensual as
sault on the palate, the Coffee Tavern also provides a
venue for musical artists on a specially prepared stage
upstairs and a venue for visual artists. The current ex
hibit, for instance, features some fascinating creative
notebooks and over-large drawings and paintings deal
ing with an emotionally and intellectually complex and
stimulating intermixing of words and color. You
shouldn't miss it.
No, you shouldn't. For $1.25 minus your WCC student
discount, you can buy yourself a bottomless cup of extra
fine coffee and claim a table, immerse yourself in any
number of ongoing conversations or simply open a
book, soak in the life surrounding you, and improve
yourself. In a Wilkes county restaurant. Imagine.
Pizza Hut Restaurant
By: Lacie Lyon
On Dec. 13 the staff of the newspaper visited the Pizza
Hut on School Street. It was at 1:00 p.m. and the restau
rant was not busy at all. We were seated and deprived
of service for twenty minutes. Then finally the waitress
asked for our drink orders. When our drinks arrived, we
came to notice that the waitress had her fingers on the
inside of the glasses as she carried them to our table.
As we gave her our pizza order, she had to be told four
or five times what kind of pizza we were asking for. Then
as she was bringing back our bill, one of the guys in our
group was trying to toss a beer cap in another guy’s
drink, but he missed and nearly hit the waitress. We
then pointed out an error in the way our bill was rung up.
She then left to fix it. Not even five minutes after she had
left, up pops the manager to our table. She had a very
brash and stern attitude toward us and she stated how
we had been throwing beer bottles at her waitress,
which was obviously wrong due to two facts: there were
only two beers served to us and one was in a guy’s hand
and the other was taken off by a waitress. The other is
the fact that no one had the energy to throw anything;
we had no energy from lack of food. After several at
tempts at ordering the pizza, our order was back around
twenty minutes later. Not to bad speed wise. I will give
them that much. They were finally prompt. However,
when the food came back, guess what? It was incorrect.
Go figure!!! What was the saddest part about the whole
experience was the fact that the place currently has an A
rating. Although when we were there, the floors were
nasty and the bathrooms appeared to have not been
cleaned in ages (one person was almost afraid to wash
his hands). To top the whole deal off, they left dirty
dishes and leftovers on the tables until the tables were
needed by customers. As we left the restaurant, we
were met with mockery from the manager who asked to
be given a copy of this article. You can believe that the
five of us will be hand delivering this article to her. So we
ask you to join us in our boycott of Pizza Hut on School
Street until they “clean up” their act. Although they have
an A rating, one must wonder what kind of scale they
are on because I totally disagree unless A means Abso
lutely terrible with poor service. Then I will whole
heartedly agree. Until that is the scale they are on, I give
them an F.