FantasyLand Grill Brunch
Well , being in the vicinity and reading about their brunch , my " Handbrake " and I decided to try it today ( Sunday05/06 ) . We don't often do brunches much anymore seeing how the quality and service has steadily gone down hill in the last 6-10 years now , but the thought of a seafood ' all you can eat ' sounded good enough to sway us in .
Some random thoughts .
We showed up 25 minutes late . My fault .
It was easy to find The grill , and there was plenty of parking ( south side of FL mall just off of 87th . ) . I apologized to the maitre'd and explained my reason . She seemed indifferent , and just rolled her eyes as she scanned at the reservation book . We were the last name left to be scratched out , and this was 11:30 am .
My first impression is as follows . They had approx. 60% capacity . No one was in front of us , yet we were made to wait so they could clean off and prepare a table . This I thought of as lame , as they definately weren't overtaxed , and the waiters/busboys seemed to be dragging their butts . Another quick observation , and a hint to any resturant managers reading this . Don't put the really big people by the entrance . Yes it may be convienient if they should require a quick emergency exit in a stretcher with minimal fuss to the rest of the patrons , but standing in line and watching a 350-400 pound women stuffing her face just about put me off the food before I even had a chance to try it . I almost balked at going in . Maybe that was a Omen .
The food : mediocre would be more then generous . Salad was good , but it's hard to screw up a salad and veggies . Had also the usual brunch bacon , eggs , french toast , sausages , cold cuts , potatoes etc . What was not usual was lobster , some crab , shrimp , sweet and sour pork , and a few other Thai-salady dishes . Now ,upon writing this it sounds good , but in reality , the food was very bland . The lobster/crab was tasteles. Also there were no seafood ' tools ' , the claw crackers or any picks . It seemed like the folks who put on this fare had no idea how to eat it or may never themselves had it to realize you need to break the shell to get at the meat. They had broken the claws a bit for the patrons but not enough to retrieve all of the meat.
The rest of the food sampled followed suit . Oh , and I was really let down when a ' chef ' wanted to top up the shrimp. He came out and emptied a plastic bag full of shrimp into the display. He didn't make any effort to conceal the fact that the shrimp were nothing more than packaged safeway shrimp . He was not hired from the Top of his class .
Also lacking was the service . Even something so simple as a glass of water offerred rather then having to beg for it just lets the whole establishment slide into the ' bin of disapointments ' . And the folks who sat next to us who asked for water only received it after waiting more then 10 minutes for it . Very poor service in my books .
My wife was not offered cream, milk or sugar for her tea and when she asked , she was brought a whole glass. It was difficult to pour it into the tea from the large glass but she managed. Aslo , we had to wait more then what I thought was a appropreate time even just to get our bill . It was a fianl insult , in my books .
The food was altogether mediocre and the service was unattentive. We will not go back and would not reccommend it to anyone. The brunch at the Banff Springs Hotel or the Delta hotel at the Calgary Airport are far , far superior.
Oh , the bathrooms were clean and the beutiful marble has held up very well . It's actually dissappointing to see such craftmanship and material in such a mediocre place . Oh well , seeing that the place is run by what seems like a family group means unless the managment changes , things here I surmize will not change . Shame really .....
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Rest/ Fantasyland Grill
Location/ FantasyLand Mall , Edmonton
Food rating/ 2.25 out of 5
Ambience/ 3 out of 5
Service / 2 out of 5
Overall ,
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