Restaurant Brand is Shifting: Red Coach Inn
We decided on Friday to drive across the border to have dinner in Niagara Falls–the American Side. It is an hour drive and we wanted to pick up some mail at our post office box. We have been traveling and using Trip Advisor to pick restaurants and have found it to work fairly well. We wanted to try it out near home as well. We try to eat in a restaurant that is in the top 20 restaurants on Tripadvisor and although we are sometimes disappointed, our hit rate is much higher using this strategy than just looking around and picking a restaurant. I have a corn allergy which is making it harder to eat out, so I have to try to find restaurants that can help me get a meal that will work for me. On Friday we decided to try the Red Coach Inn. It had some good reviews and I looked at their menu online. It looked good and very reasonable in terms of price. We got there and it is lovely. The location is great. The waitress did an amazing job of taking care of us and of managing my corn allergy. She went to the kitchen to ask questions, looked at labels and generally was kind and helpful. We ordered a shrimp cocktail, a Caesar salad, and a house salad that comes with almonds, blue cheese, and strawberries. Our kids ordered a lobster trio and we each ordered the surf and turf. While the service was outstanding, our meal just wasn’t up to the standards we expect when we spend $180 for dinner with tip. We want something better than average. My frustration was with the amount of food the kitchen was serving that they don’t make on-site. They don’t make their salad dressings, they don’t make their wings, and they use cornstarch to “hold” their Bearnaise sauce. We had an opportunity to speak to the manager. He came to our table to apologize for a very small error with my meal (this error was really...
read more
