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Saturday, September 17, 2016
Restaurant Review - Elephant Bar, Hayward California
My review can also be found here: http://bit.ly/2czrPw5
This is a review of my visit two weeks ago on:
September 3, 2016.
I've been going back and forth about cutting this restaurant from my list of places to eat and after the last visit, I have decided not to go back. I remember this place a couple months back when they didn't have actual menus for a while and they had paper on a giant board you had to read off of and that was their entire menu. My husband was laughing when I told him that if our children were with us, they would use them as weapons to hit each other over the head with, they were that long.
Anyways back to my visit on September 3. This is another restaurant that doesn't like to have people greet customers at the door. Instead, they expect you to just stand there and wait. They see you standing there, but they just continue to do whatever they are doing. We almost reached over and got our own menus and sat down ourselves because they weren't even busy and had no excuse for making people stand there and wait. We finally were seated and had to wait another ten minutes for the guy to decide to ask what we wanted to drink and then another couple of minutes for him to come and take our order. I won't post it here, but I even took a picture of the growing line that formed after we came in. I mean come on, I understand if you are busy, but when the restaurant is only about a third of the way full, at least seat people. This should really say something, since it was a Friday and it was almost empty. If you go to the location along the Peninsula, there's always a wait and they are full even in the middle of the week for lunch.
We ended up order the sampler platter, because we always do and I ordered the top sirloin with garlic mashed potatoes and macaroni & cheese. As we sat there waiting for our food, there was a lot of yelling coming from the kitchen staff and dropping of plates. You would think they were arguing over there or something, but they weren't they were laughing. It was like they were at a party or something and we were the people that weren't informed they were attending a party.
Finally the food came. The appetizer was good, it always is. I wish I could say the same about the sirloin. The last time we came here (sometime in August) I ordered the same thing "well done" and the thing was practically burnt. Like it was to the point where I had to chew the thing until it was practically mush to be able to swallow it. So this time, I ordered it medium rare because clearly they like to over cook things at this place. I was wrong. The sirloin was rare. It was also raw, I almost sent it back, but I've seen one too many movies about food being sent back to the kitchen (Road Trip being a good example). So I decided to focus on the sides. The macaroni was all cheese, I am a cheese lover, I LOVE cheese. But this one, was almost entirely made up of cheese. It was disgusting and I was really looking forward it eating that too. So I pushed that away as well, my last hope for the plate being the garlic mashed potatoes. Couldn't eat that either. Why? I swear the cook that prepared that must have dumped the entire thing of garlic they had back there into the mash as they were making it. I like garlic, I even go to the Gilroy Garlic Festival every year, but this was BAD. It was kind of like if you were to go to the store and buy garlic cloves and shove them into your mouth and start chewing.
If that wasn't bad enough, the first beer my husband ordered was a Stella. When he asked for another beer the color didn't look right and he said it tasted strange. He doesn't like to complain either so I just ignored him thinking maybe it was the food mixed with the alcohol. Nope, when we asked for the bill, he served him Blue Moon not once but twice. I almost fell off the booth laughing because I just couldn't believe the guy didn't know what he was drinking. He was the only person in the dining area that was drinking beer. We all make mistakes, but this place is a joke and I have a feeling they won't be open much longer if they continue at the rate they are going. They have a lot of reviews that are not so great, so we aren't the only people that have come here and left unhappy. It took so long between the time that we ordered and we got our food, that I played Pokemon Go for almost half an hour. I understand the concept of not wanting to rush orders so the restaurant can look fuller longer, but damn this place is terrible.
I've been going back and forth about cutting this restaurant from my list of places to eat and after the last visit, I have decided not to go back. I remember this place a couple months back when they didn't have actual menus for a while and they had paper on a giant board you had to read off of and that was their entire menu. My husband was laughing when I told him that if our children were with us, they would use them as weapons to hit each other over the head with, they were that long.
Anyways back to my visit on September 3. This is another restaurant that doesn't like to have people greet customers at the door. Instead, they expect you to just stand there and wait. They see you standing there, but they just continue to do whatever they are doing. We almost reached over and got our own menus and sat down ourselves because they weren't even busy and had no excuse for making people stand there and wait. We finally were seated and had to wait another ten minutes for the guy to decide to ask what we wanted to drink and then another couple of minutes for him to come and take our order. I won't post it here, but I even took a picture of the growing line that formed after we came in. I mean come on, I understand if you are busy, but when the restaurant is only about a third of the way full, at least seat people. This should really say something, since it was a Friday and it was almost empty. If you go to the location along the Peninsula, there's always a wait and they are full even in the middle of the week for lunch.
We ended up order the sampler platter, because we always do and I ordered the top sirloin with garlic mashed potatoes and macaroni & cheese. As we sat there waiting for our food, there was a lot of yelling coming from the kitchen staff and dropping of plates. You would think they were arguing over there or something, but they weren't they were laughing. It was like they were at a party or something and we were the people that weren't informed they were attending a party.
Finally the food came. The appetizer was good, it always is. I wish I could say the same about the sirloin. The last time we came here (sometime in August) I ordered the same thing "well done" and the thing was practically burnt. Like it was to the point where I had to chew the thing until it was practically mush to be able to swallow it. So this time, I ordered it medium rare because clearly they like to over cook things at this place. I was wrong. The sirloin was rare. It was also raw, I almost sent it back, but I've seen one too many movies about food being sent back to the kitchen (Road Trip being a good example). So I decided to focus on the sides. The macaroni was all cheese, I am a cheese lover, I LOVE cheese. But this one, was almost entirely made up of cheese. It was disgusting and I was really looking forward it eating that too. So I pushed that away as well, my last hope for the plate being the garlic mashed potatoes. Couldn't eat that either. Why? I swear the cook that prepared that must have dumped the entire thing of garlic they had back there into the mash as they were making it. I like garlic, I even go to the Gilroy Garlic Festival every year, but this was BAD. It was kind of like if you were to go to the store and buy garlic cloves and shove them into your mouth and start chewing.
If that wasn't bad enough, the first beer my husband ordered was a Stella. When he asked for another beer the color didn't look right and he said it tasted strange. He doesn't like to complain either so I just ignored him thinking maybe it was the food mixed with the alcohol. Nope, when we asked for the bill, he served him Blue Moon not once but twice. I almost fell off the booth laughing because I just couldn't believe the guy didn't know what he was drinking. He was the only person in the dining area that was drinking beer. We all make mistakes, but this place is a joke and I have a feeling they won't be open much longer if they continue at the rate they are going. They have a lot of reviews that are not so great, so we aren't the only people that have come here and left unhappy. It took so long between the time that we ordered and we got our food, that I played Pokemon Go for almost half an hour. I understand the concept of not wanting to rush orders so the restaurant can look fuller longer, but damn this place is terrible.
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