"Very Poor Food"
We went to the Open Cork for the first and last time. The décor was pleasing, but that's pretty much the only positive comment about this travesty of a restaurant. The food was appalling and the service disappointing at best.
I ordered the Grilled Calamari with Pernod caper tomato sauce for my appetizer and my husband ordered a Caesar salad. The calamari arrived and it would have easily fed three people. That`s not necessarily a bad thing, but this was three slabs of charred overcooked calamari. My first bite tasted like charcoal and it had that unfortunate texture that all overcooked calamari has, rubber. But this was burnt rubber. I couldn’t eat it and when the waiter came to ask how we were enjoying our appetizers I told him that it was overcooked and burnt. He then explained to me that this was the way it was meant to be cooked. Sorry, but it’s not. He took it away and quickly came back to ask if I wanted another order prepared and I said no. He said, ‘no charge’ so I agreed thinking that I would see how they prepared it a second time and if it was equally as terrible it didn’t matter because I wasn’t going to be charged. You can see where this is going to end....
The second order of calamari appeared quickly and it was not charred. It was relatively tender and decently cooked, so my focus changed to the sauce it was floating in. Imagine cheap thick bottled tomato sauce with 20-30 capers thrown in, then add some undercooked crunchy green peppers and that was the sauce. I struggled through about half, but It was truly terrible.
For a main course I ordered Mediterranean Spaghetti and my husband ordered Fettucini Primavera in a cream sauce. The sauce in his dish had the appearance of brown soupy broth. Note to the ‘chef’, if you cook mushrooms in butter and then add a cup of milk, it will turn brown. And you have to THICKEN a cream sauce otherwise it will be soup. Under cooked vegetables completed this dish. My poor husband managed to get through half of it before putting down his fork with a pained look on his face.
My dish was awful. More thick tomato sauce from a jar with under cooked vegetables and clearly the cheapest spaghetti pasta that they could order in bulk. How any chef could send this food out to customers was beyond me. When the bill came, of course the calamari was on it. I guess his ‘no charge’ meant that I wasn’t going to be charged for two orders. It was a $70 waste of calories. My kind-hearted husband tipped 15%.
Unfortunately I did not look up any reviews of this restaurant until after we returned home. A number of people have given this place a good review mostly because it has a summer patio, but there were also some bad and almost frightening reviews about the sanitation. Save your money and your palate and stay away from this restaurant.
This was my first restaurant review. After reading the good ratings, I could not, in good conscience, let this horrendous dining experience go. One of the worst restaurants I have ever visited.
Restaurant website: http://www.theopencork.com/
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