Melbourne Restaurants

Here's a Yellow Dog Cafe gameplan: Keep your wits about you and your wallet in your front pocket if you venture into the Yellow Dog Cafe. Try not to be star struck by the $27 cookbook bearing the restaurant's name. Make sure you are not interested in an evenly-paced meal. Plan to pay more than you would at Bern's in Tampa or Gramercy Tavern in NYC. And, finally, keep your taste expectations at ankle level.

Have you ever left a restaurant feeling as if you just got off a bus in Rome with half of what you got on with? I have. Five family members and I recently had a meal at Yellow Dog Cafe (no relation at all to Yellow Dog Eats in Gotha, Florida, of which I am a fan). The combination of amateurish and insincere service, reckless pacing, pedestrian food, and inexcusable pricing made for a meal worth warning others about.

Let's get credibility issues off the table. I've eaten in restaurants of varying quality around the world. I have happily paid well more than two hundred dollars per person when warranted. A good greasy spoon diner is priceless provided it doesn't claim to be Per Se. A restaurant that makes claims better live up to those claims. I've cooked with published chefs. I read cookbooks the way some read romance novels. I study food because I love it, and I love being able to cook it. I assess every restaurant I eat in as if I am the owner looking for improvements. I know who Escoffier is. And, I don't eat in fast food restaurants. I've earned my seat at the table.

Our $330 bill, which included a 10-12% punitive tip, was purposefully low for several reasons. There were three drinkers but they didn't want to order a second drink because my husband sent his first Crown Royal and water back because it was so lightly touched by Crown. He has never done that before, and the drink that was returned to him was no better. Either the bartender needs training or the restaurant is dictating that the drinks are poured ridiculously light. My family - usually the life of any party - was close to stone-faced once they read the menu, saw the prices, endured several delays, and experienced poorly-trained staff. One server carried my bottle of Voss under his arm. We ordered two appetizers for the table. The conch fritters were gummy inside and the accompanying sauce simply flavorless. The baked Brie was reluctantly substituted for the potato chips with warm blue cheese sauce, which was 86'ed by the kitchen at 8 pm on a Saturday. Surely they weren't surprised they had potato chip loving patrons on a Saturday night? Was it a failed mise en place or lack of potatoes that foiled them? The baked Brie had a colorless crust that needed another six minutes in the oven but was rushed out of the kitchen, so it could arrive 12 minutes instead of 18 minutes after the fritters made it to our table. Did we eat it? Yes. It was 8:30 pm, and we were hungry.

Did I mention that we waited for almost 15 minutes to be acknowledged by our servers? Or that once we did order drinks, we had to ask twice for them before they finally arrived with the ice largely melted. We were told the bartender was busy. Note to all Yellow Dogs: We don't care why the drink hasn't arrived. We care that it does arrive.

It was an hour from the time we were seated to the time our salads appeared. The rest of the family had Caesar salads. I opted for the spinach salad that came with an insulting three dollar up charge. It was a decent salad, but it was not the quality I would expect based upon The Dog's advertising. The blue cheese lacked the high notes needed to properly cut the sweetness of the blueberries and the vinaigrette. The Caesar salads were, by all reports, underwhelming.

For a restaurant that touts its scenic view, my and my husband's view into the server station where a huge wall clock reminded us of the delays and where we could keep tabs on the serial bickering between the servers was not worth the price of admission.

I stopped keeping track but there was an awkwardly long gap between the time the salads were removed from the table and the time the first three entrees arrived. Yes, there was a three to four minute gap, without explanation or apology, before the remaining entrees arrived. With high prices come expectations. Having all entrees served at the same time is one of them. A fundamental one, I might add. I should never ever have to say to my fellow diners, "go ahead and eat or it will get cold" when I am paying $44 for a filet mignon. The filet was set atop an inartful gob of over-salted mashed potatoes that were, in turn, hiding some cooked-to-exhaustion green beans and sloppily-manicured broccoli florets. The green vegetables harbored by mashed potatoes combo was sadly repeated in five of the six entrees. It is bad form to hide food with food. Three of us had the signature onion crusted chicken ($26) or grouper ($38). The chicken was overcooked and the onion crust more appropriately found in a recipe from Reader's Digest or some B-grade woman's magazine. It was overly-sweet for a savory dish, and the crust was visually unappealing. I am told the onion encrusted grouper tasted like yams. This is not what comfort food with a flair tastes like. This is what fraud tastes like. The Inconsistently-cooked half rack of lamb ($30) was inundated with an overpowering supply of spices that hid the meat's true flavor, or perhaps, a food quality issue.

There was a $54 NY strip special, and a $50 Maine lobster special that night. Interestingly, the menu listed on the Dog’s website has no prices. I bet I know why. It does, however, incorrectly state a range of prices ($22-39).

There are too many things that are wrong with Yellow Dog Cafe to chalk it up to an off night. The Dog's management knows exactly what it is doing, and it's reprehensible. Despite the evening's raison d'être - to celebrate a birthday - no one wanted dessert or coffee. We were all too disappointed, price shocked, and we wanted off the bus.