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E-mail your own reviews to HeadPublicRestaurantCritic@gmail.com and have them posted.
Must Include:
1.) Your name (or nickname or handle or symbol or whatever)
2.) Pictures of the receipt or meal (or both) to prove that you actually ate at the place you're reviewing
3.) A rating: Great, Good, Satisfactory, or Sucks
4.) The date of when you ate there.
5.) The address of the restaurant.
6.) And, most importantly, your review, however you want to write it.
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Hello, and welcome to PublicRestaurtantCritic.com. The purpose of this website is to basically vent frustrations over crappy service and crappy food... that you paid for with your hard earn cash.
The genesis of this project started when I was eating a couple of days before Christmas '07 at a Logan's Roadhouse (ground zero of this website), and the service was just crappy. The waiter was not bad, he was just trying to do his job, but the general management and food was just atrocious. My family and I were not happy, but we really could not complain to the waiter, it wasn't his fault, and we could not complain to the manager, he couldn't change the past. Basically, we did not want to complain because, at that point in our meal, after we had sat through horrible service and already received our food (complete with previously frozen celery sticks and two orders of the same plate that somehow had different foods on them), complaining would not have helped at all. I was kinda pissed off that we had such a lousy time at Logan's, because people go out to dinner to get taken care of, not shit on -- restaurants are in the hospitality industry afterall. As I was leaving Logan's, I wished there was a website where I could go to post my complaints on a public forum, to let people know that Logan's was a crappy place to eat. I thought to myself, in my ideal world, there would be such a website. Since I couldn't find such a website, I decided to create my own. The project of this website is for people, the general public just like you reading this right now, to write in and share your feelings about the restaurants you frequent and eat at. You can write in a complaint about a certain restaurant, or you can write in a letter of praise for a favorite restaurant, to let other people know that that restaurant is worth checking out. The goal: To create a database based off of users' submissions to tell people which restaurants they should go to, and, most importantly, which restaurants they should avoid. To submit your own contribution, simply send an e-mail to HeadPublicRestaurantCritic@gmail.com with the following: 1.) A rating: Great (awesome service and food), Good (liked it), Satisfactory (decent service and food, but would go there again nevertheless), or Sucks (bad service and food; horrible experience, would not go there again). 2.) A description of why you think this restaurant deserves the rating you gave it. 3.) Pictures: At least one picture of your receipt (to ensure that you actually ate at the restaurant you are writing about, and maybe some extra pictures such as a picture of the meal and the outside building (camera phones are probably the easiest to use)). Again, the goal of this site is to not only vent your frustrations, but also to praise restaurants that need more publicity. One of the underlying hopes of this site is to build a database of great, small restaurants that people should visit that they might not have known about otherwise. Please, write in and help me build this database. As we get contributions, each state, and eventually each city, will have its own page with their own restaurants listed (hell, maybe we'll even make this international), so that anybody in any city will have a public resource to help them decide which restaurants to eat at and which ones to avoid. So please, write in to HeadPublicRestaurantCritic@gmail.com and lets get this site going. In the end, either one of two things will happen. 1.) This site will become of a mecca of restaurant information, with honest reviews and listings of those great hole-in-the-wall and mom-and-pop diners. 2.) This site will become a chronicle of just me posting reviews of all the restaurants I eat at hoping to get this site off the ground. Either option is fine by me.
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Latest Reviews
Austin, Texas 78701 (512) 478-3281 |
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Thundercloud Subs is a local, central Texas chain of sandwich shops, and they are pretty good. Normally I hate buying sandwiches from sandwich shops because I feel that I could just make the same thing at home for less money, but I never really get that feeling when I go to Thundercloud.
One nice feature about Thundercloud is that they always have a weekly special -- one of their sandwiches featured at a discounted price. The specials are cool because 1.) It's a good deal, and 2.) It allows you to try something new that you might not have normally tried at regular menu price. Since I like Thundercloud, and love their specials, I made a promise to myself to try every special every week (although now it's a bi-monthly special, so I'll rephrase that last sentence as "I made a promise to myself to try every special every other week"). I've been trying to try all of the bi-monthly Thundercloud subs specials mainly because they're cheap and it’s decent grub, (and basically also because I don't know what else to do with my life), and as part of the rules I set up for this experiment/operation/boredom-killer is that I must try all of the specials from the same Thundercloud location (there are more than a couple here in the Austin area of central Texas), and the one I've been going to is located near the intersection of I-35 and 290, but, I discovered a Thundercloud Subs location in the vicinity of a new, temporary job I'm working and basically said, "Screw my morals, I'm gonna try the bi-monthly special at this location rather than at the location I've been going to because it's close, I'm hungry, I need to review this special, and if I can kill two birds with one stone, screw my rules, let's review this sandwich." As for the sandwich itself, it was alright. It was their turkey sandwich, which I'm assuming is because this bi-monthly period encompassed Thanksgiving, so of course we need more turkey right? The sandwich was good, but I would have preferred it be anything other than turkey, like peanut butter and jelly, because offering a turkey sandwich on special during the Thanksgiving season is like giving an alcoholic a six-pack when he should be in rehab -- it's the easy way out. I must say that I do kind of like the lay-out of this location -- you order your sandwich at the cashier, you pay, you get a ticket with your order on it, you go to any one of 4 open 'sandwich-making stations' (I don't know how else to describe them), you give your ticket to a sandwich maker who makes your sandwich, and then you sit down and eat it -- I think this strategy is pretty efficient, at least more efficient than the location I've been going to where your cashier is also your sandwich-maker: this new way just seems easier, once you know what's going on and what to do (which I didn't on this first initial visit to this new location where I was just basically confused as to where to go and what to give to whom, but in the end, it all worked out fine). Overall, this review is more important because of the precedent it sets in my rules of food critiquing journalistic ethics, which basically means I have none (I mean really, if a restaurant chain is offering the same special at all of their locations, it shouldn't matter where I got the sandwich, right? It should all be the same, and if its not, that's not my problem, but the chain's, right?), than for the sandwich itself -- a turkey sandwich at Thanksgiving? Really??? The only bad thing about Thundercloud is their stupid Jingle they use in their radio advertisements, which drives me absolutely batshit every f*cking time I hear it because it is so awful. (It’s so awful it makes me want to tear my ears out of my head with my bare hands… or change the station, which is actually the opposite of what radio station programmers desire – they work hard to build the biggest audience for their advertising clients, but this particular advertiser is actually driving away some of that audience, or at least me. Oh well. |
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Austin, TX 78723 (512) 451-5830 |
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So the whole point of me trying each and every one of Thundercloud Subs' bi-monthly specials was 1.) to try all of their sandwiches instead of me just ordering the same thing from them time in and time out, and 2.) to save money -- on this occasion I achieved the first goal, but not the second, as I kept procrastinating this bi-monthly visit to the point where I missed one of the specials, and to keep in accordance with my ideals, I opted to get the sandwich that was previously on special (the one I missed because of my procrastination) but was no longer on special (which all fault lays on me), at the full price. So, in keeping with the main spirit of my grand plan to sample all of Thundercloud Subs' subs (or at least the ones they put on special), I opted to sacrifice '2.)' to maintain '1.)'.
So the sandwich that was on special that I missed was the Texas Tuna, a sandwich consisting of tuna salad, guacamole/avocado (Thundercloud subs says it’s avocado, but they mash it up, so isn’t it then guacamole?), and, here's the kicker, jalapenos. Now, I've never been a fan of really hot or spicy food (actually, really hot and spicy foods is a turn off for me), but over the course of my short lifetime I've started to eat more and more spicy food. Instead of getting nachos without jalapenos, I'll get my nachos with jalapenos, but pick out most of them. I'm hard core that way. So, I'm not a big fan of spicy foods, but I'm working my way up, and in the spirit of trying all of Thundercloud Subs' in the manner that they are supposed to be eaten, I didn't tell my sandwich maker to skip the jalapenos -- I just stood by as I watched him get a whole jalapeno (I don't even recall the jalapeno coming from a jar with vinegar -- I think these were fresh jalapenos), slice it up and place it on top of the tuna salad (which he had already placed on the bread) evenly down the middle so that there was a consistent layer of jalapenos lengthwise throughout the sandwich. Then he smeared guacamole/avocado on the top slice of the bread, put the two pieces of breads together, and wa-la, my sandwich was made. As I made my way from the counter to my shit, I couldn't help but wondering how messy this sandwich was going to be, since basically it was composed of tuna salad and guacamole/avocado, ingredients that are between solid and liquid states and can quickly become displaced in the course of the eating of the sandwich. As I ate my sandwich, I came to two revelations: 1.) The sandwich which I thought had the potential to become messy did indeed become messy, very messy. As I bit down on one side/end of the sandwich, everything in the sandwich shifted towards the other side/end. It was very messy. 2.) I'm still a pussy when it comes to hot (spice-wise, not temperature-wise) foods. As I started eating my sandwich and biting and chewing up the jalapenos, I thought I could ride out the heat, but I couldn't. The jalapenos were hot, very hot -- I've eaten some jalapenos in my day, but these were by far the hottest, probably because they might have also been the freshest jalapenos I have ever had. I ended up having to take the jalapenos out, which made my sandwich even messier because they became enmeshed in both the tuna salad and the guacamole/avocado. So, in the end, I had a messy, too-hot sandwich which I would never have gotten if it weren't on special, but wound up getting for full price after it had been on special because I wanted to uphold my goal of trying all of the subs Thundercloud Subs puts on special. I don't know whether I won this time or lost. I'm thinking the latter. |
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Round Rock, TX 78681 (512) 244-2936 |
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I went to a Rudy's recently, which is a restaurant that everybody but me seems to love. Rudy's is a bar-b-q place that serves meat by the pound, and they have a lot of locations throughout Texas. As far as I know, all of the locations include a general/convenience store as adjacent (or even as a part of) the restaurant, and some locations even have gas pumps. I've never really liked Rudy's because it seems like they were going for that whole 'general store slash bar-b-q place' motif, trying to evoke the way how many general stores also served food back in the day -- I'm not against stores that do that because most of them are privately owned and its just what those stores do, sell food on the side. But when a chain restaurant tries to hijack this idea for their own purposes, with no genuinity behind it besides the basic genuinity of masked greed, that's where I start getting turned off.
So, Rudy's is a bar-b-q place trying to recreate this old time feel, which they do by placing strategically place trash like old signs and pictures everywhere to try to recreate this down to earth feeling of an old restaurant, but they fail because it just seems so fake and pandering, but apparently I'm the only one that feels this way, so there must be something wrong with me. One of the signs they had up states "You mother is not here, please clean up your own mess" which really pissed me because that insinuates that 1.) I'm not going to clean up mess; and 2.) I'm at a restaurant giving you money, please don't talk down to me. Any way, so Rudy's sells meats by the pound, with sides in a refrigerator that you can pick up, while in line to order, to go along with your meal. I got half a pound of brisket, a fountain drink, and my party got a container of potato salad which we all shared. The brisket was fine, but I got bored of it quickly because it was just plain brisket which constituted my meal -- it left me somewhat lacking. Also, they put your meal on paper, which I guess is alright, but seriously, paper plates aren't that expensive. I hate it would restaurants do a thing an old way (like serving on paper) just to do it the old way when there are much better alternatives in the present. But oh well. Like I said, I've been to a couple of Rudy's, but this is the first one I reviewed because it's the first one I've been to since starting this site. During my previous visits, I used to get a baked potato topped with brisket and all of the other good stuff that comes with a baked potato (cheese, butter, sour cream, etc.), which is what I tried to order on this visit, only to be stared at blankly and stupidly by the cashier who took our order. She looked at me like I was from another planet. Apparently, Rudy's doesn't serve baked potatoes, and apparently, the cashier couldn't remember a time when Rudy's had ever sold baked potatoes, so obviously, between the cashier and me, I was the stupid one, so I had to settle for half a pound of brisket which, like I noted before, severely lacked variety. A lot of people seem to be impressed by Rudy's, but I'm not one of them. As you stand in line waiting to order, you can pick up a drink that they have on ice along the wait line. There was an old man in front of me who looked to me like he was in his seventies who picked up a bottle of Bud Light and had it nearly finished before he was able to get to the cashier to order (this was in the middle of the day on a Sunday no less). I'm thinking that guy likes Rudy's; me, not too much. |
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Austin, TX 78758 512-533-WING (9464) |
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So I keep saying that I hate Pluckers yet I keep going back (actually, this was only my second visit to Pluckers in 2008), why? Because other people like Pluckers. I had family in town and they wanted to eat somewhere where they could also watch whatever college football games were big that day (this was on a Saturday), so we ended up going to Pluckers, which is known for having big screen tv's to screen all of the sports action on any given day (including probably at the end of the world).
So we went to Pluckers, it was packed with UT fans (I being in Austin and all), and everybody seemed to be yelling and in some sort of frenzied state whenever a big play was made or something -- it got to be rather annoying after a while. As for the food, I ended up ordering two flavors of wings, buffalo mild and lemon pepper. The buffalo wings were alright, not great or anything. The lemon pepper kind of sucked, they were all try and hard. I also ordered some jalapeno poppers as an appetizer, but didn't eat them as an appetizer because the dipshits that work there brought them with our entrees, making it physically and temporally impossible to eat the jalapeno poppers before our main course was brought to us. I know calling the people that work at Pluckers dipshits might be a broad generalization and probably isn't in good taste, but fuck it, this was my second visit to Pluckers in '08 and I've had questionable service on both occasions. Pluckers is 0-2 with me for '08, so calling the people that work at Pluckers dipshits is not a broad generalization, but rather a valid opinion based on my own empirical observations and experience. So what did I learn from this visit to Pluckers: Sports fans are such religious zealots they scare me in their blind devotion to something they have no control over (i.e., yelling louder at the tv won't make your favorite team play any better). The food at Pluckers is so overpriced I feel like I'm being raped while clogging my arteries -- it was almost like a double attempted suicide on my part, agreeing to eat there and all. Pluckers employees are dipshits. Oh, and about their jalapeno poppers... they were delicious. They were awesome, and they came with some sort of strawberry chutney sauce that was equally delightful. Overall, Pluckers sucks, but their awesome jalapeno poppers saved them from getting a 'Sucks' rating this time. |
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Austin, TX 78752 (512) 453-4111 |
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Ok, so it's been a while since I've been back to Shilla Restaurant. When I first found this restaurant, I thought it was awesome for its lunch specials and it started becoming my default place to go for sushi during the work week's lunch time hours. Then, I got a job in another part of town and I couldn't make it to the Shilla lunch specials and back within an hour, so I stopped going. Then I found another sushi place with lunch specials in the vicinity of my work and started going there, realizing that I didn't have the culinary tasting chops to differentiate the two different sushi places, so this new sushi place near my work became my default sushi lunch hour place of choice.
Recently, I got off of work early on a Friday and decided to check out my old sushi haunting ground, Shilla Restaurant. Normally when I go to Shilla, I go around 1, 1:30 to avoid the lunch crowd, and boy do I avoid them as there are hardly any customers when I normally used to go. I used to wonder if that was the norm for them, with so little customers, and if they would be able to stay open. This time, I went right at 12, and man, there were more customers that I was accustomed to. It wasn't packed, but it was busy. So I sat down and ordered what I normally order at Shilla, the SS5 lunch special consisting of a rainbow row and 5 pieces of sushi, with some miso soup thrown in for good measure. When I got my sushi, I was surprised to find, in addition to the sushi I ordered, I found two big pieces of a roll I had never previously had. The roll had salmon (cooked) and cream cheese inside, was fried with some sort of batter around it, and was drizzled with some sort of black sauce. I ate these rolls last because I didn't want the black sauce contaminating my little dish of soy sauce that I was using for the rest of my sushi, and I was surprised to find that these two extra roll pieces were actually pretty good (not that I had much doubt, salmon and cream cheese is pretty much always a win-win combination for me). The two pieces were also kind of big, it took me two bites to finish each piece. But, I was left pondering, why would they serve these two extra pieces when they didn't have too? Was it an attempt to create greater value for their customers and get them coming back? Were these pieces left over from another dish and they decided to give them to me instead of wasting them? Did they recognize my absence and give me these pieces to get me to come back every week like I used to? Sadly, I don't have the answer to these questions, but I do know that if my schedule permits me to come back for Shilla's lunch specials, there would be no hesitation on my part to do so. |
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N. McAllen, TX 78504 (956) 631-7344 |
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On December 23rd, I went out with my parents and brother to Logan's Roadhouse in McAllen, Texas. There was the usual wait, but things started to go down hill when we were seated. The waiter was nice, but incompetent -- the real problem was the food and overall service.
1.) My dad ordered a bowl of chili as his entree, but as we were being served our food, the waiter apologized and informed us that they were out of chili, as, let me state again, we were being served out food. The waiter should have told us they were out of chili as he was taking our orders or shortly thereafter. Granted, the waiter might not have known himself that they were out of chili, but someone, a cook at least, should have notified him when they got our orders. 2.) My mom ordered an appetizer platter, which included celery sticks to compliment the buffalo wings, but the celery sticks were DECOMPOSING. Either they had been frozen or they were old, but the were turning to gloo. 3.) In place of the non-existent chili, my dad ordered an appetizer platter, just as my mom had did. The appetizer is supposed to come with 3 different items (my mom's did) but my dad only got 2 different items. The waiter did not say why, so we had to ask why, when we had ordered 2 of the same plates, they come back looking different. The waiter said that they ran out of one of the items, which is understandable (somewhat), but unacceptable in relation to the shitty service we also received from the restaurant as a whole. Overall, I will never eat at a Logan's Roadhouse ever again. The waiter apologized for the service and food saying that they had just finished serving a big party, explaining why some of the food was out of stock, but still, its a restaurant, and they are supposed to be prepared for almost anything. Shitty service and shitty food equals a bad review. No more Logan's for me, ever. |