Jonas "Chuckwagoneer" L.'s Profile

In an already rather flighty industry, Star takes the crown for being extremely, extremely, bad.

I went here a few times (it's literally in walking distance) and not one experience was good. Last time I paid for the full deal and came back to a car that hadn't even been dusted on the inside. Yes, there was still a layer of dirt on the floor, even paper. All one guy did was run a rag around my speedometer.

At $40 for the whole deal I got $4 service. Never. Ever. Again.

Fritzl's motto ("good food, bad service") is wrong. While our waitress was clearly stressed and had a hard time coping with the dining room, she was the best thing we could find at Fritzl's.

This isn't German food. It's not even Austrian food. It's something vaguely resembling a first stab at German food. Seasoning isn't king there, it's a dictator. Everything we had during our four visits was either oversalted or had too much of a good thing in it. A cognac sauce, for example, works well if the ratio of cognac and cream is balanced - let one take over and it's just a mess.

The sauerkraut was so far from German it reminded me more of the bad stuff you get at Grand Central on weekends afternoons on your hot dogs. The Schnitzels were either tough or mushy, neither came close to the beautiful tender juiciness of a well made one. Spaetzle were not bad, but the "Swiss"  starter tasted and looked just like bad grade school lasagna while the one in cognac sauce tasted just of cognac and nothing else.

It's kind of sad that the fries, though not very well made, were the best thing we had there.

The decor is ghastly and the music ... imagine, if you will, going to Germany and eating at an American restaurant and listening for an hour to Andy Gibb - it'd be more reflective of American dining than the German Chanson crap played at Fritzl's. Real Germans don't ever listen that stuff. Ever. Never! Ever!

As Joe C. says, don't look into the kitchen. Tip is automagically included, which is a bad thing because neither front nor back of the house deserved as much money as we threw at them, tipwise.

This here German won't come back. It makes me sad and a little embarrassed to tell people that I am German. My first disclaimer from now on will always be "German, but not the Fritzl's kind".

I have no idea how anyone could, in their right mind, find a $26 dinner for three, appetizers, mains, and dessert, "pricey".

The food is excellent. This Lancaster pizzeria redeems all the bad ones in Dallas and about by a huge margin. I am loving the sauces which are more or less authentic (sans the carbonara which is made with cream and not eggs), the pizzas are huge and tasty (and have a great crust), the salads are well made, and the staff is great.

If there would be one nit to pick it'd be the location and facade which seems to scare some people away. But inside it's one of the very rare five-star experiences in Dallas county.

I am not one to gush or be swayed by pretense or the hopes of looking more sophisticated than I actually am by liking something. If anything, I am more critical of food than most people and certainly more than I should be.

Enter Eclair. Now, if you're familiar with Cedar Hill you'll agree that Eclair is unique in this town of chains and mediocre BBQ joints. It's a former residence made into a bistro, the way of which there are many in France and some great ones in California (Evan's in South Lake Tahoe, Artisan Bistro in Walnut Creek, etc.) but a concept pretty unheard of in this part of the world.

It's intimate but well lit and open, elegant without being pretentious, modern while maintaining a certain old-style charm. But all that wouldn't be important if, well, if the food wasn't good.

But, oh boy, it is. I've had many a bœuf bourguignon in my life, made even more for others. It's my holy grail. And the one at Eclair delivers. Not to be outdone, the cedar plank smoked Salmon is as enjoyable as it is modern, served on a bed of orzo instead of the go-to starch, rice. And then there's the broccoli mushroom fondue. To kill for.

The eclair we had at the end was good, the coffee strong, and the bill reasonable for the excellent quality we were served. Make sure to call ahead and reserve a table, people are taking note.

There's two kinds of "German" restaurants in the world. The ones who sell Schnitzel and think that makes them German and the ones with a folder in the entryway for anyone to look up the owner's certifications and Master Chef credentials.

This one is of the latter. The food is good, German, and well made. No oompah music to annoy me while eating, and they sell Currywurst which is to any self-respecting German what a dirty water hotdog is to a New Yorker.

I'd rate it five stars but since I am still looking for THE German restaurant in the DFW area I'll leave it at four until I can be sure they're the best :)

Junior's has everything you'd expect and demand from a BBQ joint. An abundance of "Jesus take the wheel" type slogans plastered around the dining room, a few badly adjusted TVs, semi-unfriendly staff that nevertheless cares about you and your dining experience just can't show it as well as they'd like, and good, Texan, BBQ.

I join the choir of Yelp users asking for negative ratings. I never, ever, would talk that bad about any food service operation but luckily Celestine's doesn't deserve the title for there is no service and the food is only slightly better than day-old McDonalds but about ten times more expensive.

We stopped in at a recent visit to Oakland, lured by the "fine dining" tagline. After being made to wait for 30 minutes (I would have left but my colleagues found all this extremely funny and insisted we see the train wreck through) while other guests were led past us into the empty dining room, we finally managed to get seated. Another ten minutes later someone took our drink order but promptly forgot it. When she finally returned, she not only had to re-take the drink order, she also informed us that we were cutting it close for an evening show and would have to "eat fast". Yeah, why didn't you seat us forty minutes ago, then, or told us?

The menu was an insult to anyone buying into the idea of fine dining. Two pasta dishes, one with seafood and one with chicken, a burger, and that was about it. We ordered and got cold pasta, gritty sauce from a packet (not even the worst of cooks could make such a bad product from scratch), and undercooked chicken. The burger was even worse.

Did I mention the hate radiating from the waitress and host? I flat out refused to eat my food, I have no idea in which way a woman who so clearly hates me would adulterate my food. The one bite I had was of the clearly underdone chicken and I still regret it. My company tried their burgers, one bite was all they could do. We're not food snobs. We eat things most people would push away. This was too much even for us.

You'd think it'd all end here. Think again. When we returned the plates and asked for the check, our waitress loudly told a person at the bar (my company was an Asian-American couple), "the f[expletive] [racist slur] and the two [racist slur] don't like no Black people food". Nothing to do with the rare chicken and still frozen burger patty on a burned bun?

We finally just paid and left. Later I learned than some comedian was scheduled to appear that night but didn't arrive until much later. Chalk one up for the "how the hell are they still open".

Funny how that works out. My experience seems to be the polar opposite of most other reviews on Yelp - I liked the service, disliked the food.

Getting seated quickly on a Friday evening is a plus. Having a high chair brought for the kid is even better. Food moved fast, and my coke was never empty.

That's where it, sadly, ends a little for me. The bruschetta was served on soggy bread. That's a no-no, especially for real Italians. The crunch of the bread is expected, the olive oil serves as a little bit of a softener. This version was, alas, just flabby bread decorated with olives and watery tomatoes.

We shared the Portobello appetizer which I liked. If it hadn't been drowned in fat it might have been even better. But then, there's bread, and what's better than dipping that one. So, hey, this part worked out.

The stunner was, for me, the Spaghetti Carbonara. Carbonara is a very, very, simple concept. Make Alfredo sauce (which is simply butter and parmigiano), add an egg at the last second, swirl in (but don't cook), top with pepper and any pork based goodness, and serve. Carbonara is ubiquitous in Italy simply _because_ it's so simple, real fast food actually.

At Guiseppe's it's not that simple. In fact the "Carbonara" is actually Alfredo (which is made with cream here, a no-no) mixed with a red sauce and meaty (beef) bits. Again, I hope this place is named Guiseppe after someone who has nothing to do with the day-to-day operations, lest I lose my faith in Italian cooking.

This is bad. There's reasons we can't sell a slab of fish as a "Big Mac". People assume a certain list of ingredients and preparation when ordering. My Indian friends would certainly be peed off if they ordered a Carbonara and got cow instead, my friend with the tomato allergy, too.

My main course consisted of watery sauce, a completely dry lump of chicken, and an alibi salad that lost the right to call itself that somewhere between the wilting and the listless dressing.

There's good news. The place is nicely decorated and my company was stunning, interesting, and fun to be around. If only our food had not been so mediocre...

I can not help but believe that all those 5- and 4-star ratings are either ready-mac lovers or paid shills. No, wait, strike that, even Ready-Mac tastes better than this crap.

Let's milk it, shall we?

Te maccaroni were overcooked and soggy with no (none, nada, niente) discernible redeeming qualities. Poured over that was a "creamy sauce" that makes the packet-add-water kind look and taste flavorful and gourmet. A sticky, tasteless, mess.

I ordered the BBQ on top, and it was vile. I've eaten some truly disgusting stuff in my life, sometimes on a dare, sometimes because I didn't want to listen. This was worse.

The stoner server in there (we'll get to him later) forgot my hotdog, so I can't talk about it, but I'd presume from the faces and quick toss of the guy next to me it's not that cool, either. I did have the "Grilled Cheese" with BBQ, though, and it made me take back everything I said about the Mac and Cheese. THIS one was the vilest thing I've ever eaten. Two half-warmed slices of cheap supermarket toast containing the same bad BBQ stuff and some kind of cheese lookalike. Not real cheese, not even the disgusting stuff that comes in cans, an oily, sticky, slightly plastic-y tasting mess.

My son had the PBJ. My son eats everything. Stuff no one else would touch, he chows down. He didn't even eat half of his sandwich, despite loving PBJ, and from the bite he ate we pulled not one but two brush bristles. I have no idea how paintbrush bristles get into a sandwich, but here they were.

Bad experience? Sure, can get over it. Not, though, when you had to wait close to thirty minutes from order to pick up because the dude behind the counter was walking around aimlessly, trying to find stuff or spent half a minute (no, I am not kidding you) contemplating how to cut a sandwich into two halves.

Those thirty minutes I had the misfortune of watching a "don't do this" video in food service cleanliness re-enacted in front of me. He contemplated, a few times, picking up gloves, then abstained. I don't need my food to be handled with rubber gloves, don't get me wrong, but if the person doing my food also handles money, which he did a few times, I'd prefer a hand washing or glove-changing.

That not enough? Watching him pick his nose while he did the sandwich for the guy behind me was rather off-putting. Watching him go through boxes and right back into my food didn't look so bad, compared to the fact that he scratched his behind then grabbed the container for some Mac n Cheese, fingers nicely inside the rim, and started filling it.

We paid money for four slices of supermarket bread, JIF peanut butter, a strangely smelling grape jelly, weird cheese, and cheap mac and cheese adorned with something that tasted worse than Manwich.

Maybe we need places like this to show people that there are advantages to eating at home, but for anyone contemplating going there to have decent food ... don't.

The website says "We use only fresh hand-made pasta with all natural ingredients" - the Macaroni I had were most definitely not handmade. First, they were the extruded durum flour kind, not the egg based kind one would use when making them fresh. Secondly, I know people who have been making Macaroni for decades, now, and they couldn't make them as uniform as those were. That uniformity is the hallmark of "machine-made", not "hand-made".

Lesson learned, hopefully you'll be saved from this experience. Oh, and you "food service professionals" who created Max n Cheese, I wonder where you learned to so masterfully serve three supermarket ingredients...

We'd heard a lot about Tillman's Roadhouse and so, braving the traffic on a Saturday, we had to go when we were in the area. We loved the ambiance and the service, the food however left a little to be desired.

The trio of fries arrived warm and quickly (I personally loved the sweet potato and Peruvian variety, my partner dug into the cheddar variety). What the fries had in taste, however, they sadly lacked in texture and crunch - limp and mushy rather than crispy on the outside and custardy on the inside.

I ordered the cream of mushroom / grilled cheese combo, it being billed as the best in the West, my partner had the chicken friend hanger steak. The soup was, sadly, a little watery, tasting of little more than cream with no real mushroom flavor.

The hanger steak was a little tough and the beans could have used a little less time in the heat. We both loved the gravy, the bean dressing not so much.

As for the grilled cheese sandwich, it was OK. The cheese, while well selected, had too much time to set and wasn't gooey and runny as it should be in a good GCS and instead was cold, firm, and rubbery.

We'll be going again, there's a chance that this was a fluke, but especially the much-touted grilled cheese and the soggy fries were a sore disappointment.