I emerge from blogging hibernation with a warning: Ten Stone has gone downhill. Still centrally located, still a decent beer selection, but otherwise, not worth asking for the menu.After meandering around the city, including stops at Devil's Alley (still lacking a cohesive identity, but offering plenty of open bar stools) and Pub and Kitchen (which apparently needs not one, but two pretentious girls to tell us there won't be a table for 45 minutes), the runner boyfriend and I arrived (after running, of course) at Ten Stone. I enthusiastically gushed about the fish tacos, which I once enjoyed, and the food generally. There were also plenty of tables on a Saturday night, which we should've taken as a sign.
Although we both ordered the same beer (an excellent Stoudt's Karnival Kolsh), mine arrived lukewarm while TRB's was perfectly cold. After that was replaced, our chicken tacos arrived. To describe the tacos as the kind you would get at the worst grocery store might overstate the quality here. The cold flour tortillas you normally find next to the margarine were topped with the "chicken breast topping" you would buy in the salad aisle, topped with ranch dressing and grated American cheese. Um, really? This wasn't some Top Chef challenge where bad ingredients equaled a good result, this was just bad ingredients playing out as you would expect.
We also shared a burger topped with provolone and sauteed onions. The burger, ordered medium well, arrived with mysterious pink patches toward its perimeter, a feat I have not seen achieved absent microwave intervention. But who knows, perhaps a faulty thaw process was to blame here.
Last but not least, Ten Stone adds an 18% gratuity automatically. For a party of two. Although I would have given 20%, that particular deprivation of my usual choice led me to simply sign and leave.
After apologies for abandoning the superior neighborhood burger offerings of London's and Rembrandt's, we headed back to said neighborhood, never to return to Ten Stone. Consider yourself warned.
Ten Stone is located at 21st and South. Thanks to messyandpicky.com for the photo and 2006 review.
3 comments:
We were there this weekend! Important tidbit for those with bad timing - they take a (well deserved) half hour break between brunch and the regular bar menu at around 2pm. We just had the misfortune of stumbling in there right around then :-(
I've gone there a few times with people from work for lunch. The service is incredibly SLOW! Once I received my sandwich with a hair cooked into it (blech!). To their credit they gave me a new lunch and did not charge me. Of course that meant an extra 45 minutes of waiting...
Sounds like service is slow, which is maybe why they had to add the required 18% gratuity. Bad news all around. Thanks for the tidbits!
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