Julia "I like food" Z.'s Profile

We were referred here, I think because the Overlake name impressed someone. Don't be impressed. The Overlake Cardiology Clinic is the most ghetto doctor's office we've been to in a long time.

My husband had major open-heart surgery at UW Medical Center last week. We got out of the hospital yesterday after 6 days. They wanted us to follow up today to adjust the new medication and I wanted us to stay on the Eastside because it's so much closer.

If it was a single-story building, you'd swear you were in a trailer. The whole place is CARPETED... OK, I can see that in a waiting room, but how on earth do you keep carpeted exam and procedure rooms clean? You don't. Even the RESTROOM is carpeted... I think that's disgusting in a home, never mind in a doctor's office!! How many years of pee splashes into carpet are acceptable? Really?

The room was cramped and it was clear that none of the hard surfaces are wiped down regularly. The hand-washing sink was BONE DRY, and the soap dispenser, plain old Softsoap, looked undisturbed. There was a cotton ball with blood on it discarded on the floor, clearly visible. WTF?

The nurse came in, all "ma'am" and "sir" -- that's OK once, but unless you are three years old, you do not need to start or end each of your sentences with that word. I understand when you are speaking to me. She set up and ran an EKG, putting the sensor stickies on John with her bare hands (no gloves) without cleaning the sites first with an alcohol prep pad.

The walls in this clinic are so thin that HIPPA is a complete joke. You can hear ALL of the conversation in the exam room next to you. (This becomes more important in just a moment).

My husband has a long incision over the sternum bone, which they cut open to access his heart; he also has two large surgical-drain incisions, several tiny ones through which instruments were passed, a central-line incision on his neck, and more IV- and blood draw-puncture wounds than I care to think about. These incisions are NOT yet healed and since he's a diabetic, there's an especially high risk of infection.

Dr. Holder finished up in the exam room next to us, wished them a good day, walked out, entered our exam room without even knocking, and offered to shake my husband's hand. John pretended not to notice, looking him in the eye instead. The doctor proceeded to ask a ton of health-history questions, the vast majority answered on the intake paperwork I'd just filled out. Dr. Holder is somewhat hard of hearing, and my husband, not feeling well at all after being kept waiting for 45 minutes (we were 10 minutes early), started saying "Fine" or "OK" after the doctor would ask him to repeat his initial longish, detailed answer.

Here's the kicker though (and the reason we're going to report him to the Health Department). Dr. Holder didn't wash his hands before he went to examine my husband. He didn't put on gloves. He didn't even use sanitizer gel. I stopped him by saying, "I don't mean any disrespect, but you need to wash your hands first".

Dr. Holder replied, "We have facilities outside the rooms, and I used it before I came in." This was a direct and obvious LIE. We didn't hear him run water, use a paper towel; we didn't see his wet hands and said paper towel; we didn't see him rubbing sanitizer gel, nor did we hear him activate the dispenser. He then said, "You're right, you shouldn't let anyone touch him without washing their hands first." He stepped out of the room, KA-CHUNK got some hand sanitizer gel, and came into the room rubbing it all over his hands. The alcohol vapors were overwhelming... how did we miss the ones he'd presumably created mere minutes before?

He examined my husband, again, without gloves, something that ABSOLUTELY would not have happened at UW.  He made all sorts of pronouncements about my husband's condition, some correct and some incorrect. He didn't recognize the manufacturer of John's mechanical aortic valve, ATS Medical, maker of the second-most popular replacement valve. He went to use his stethoscope on John: I raised my eyebrows and pointed to the sink; glaring at me, he went back into the hallway, got some hand-sanitizer gel to rub on the stethoscope, drying it off on a paper towel before continuing.

In the end, his demeanor was mostly kindly, but he is past the prime of his career (he is 69). His clinic is shoddy and unsanitary. He is hard enough of hearing that I don't see how his stethoscope work will be as accurate as that of someone with full hearing function. I wouldn't let him anywhere near me to do surgery, and given that a lot of cardiology is life or death, we are crystal-clear that he is not even going to get the chance to TALK to us again. We're going back to the UW system where hand-washing, gloves, gel in/gel out, equipment and room cleaning procedures are all clear, posted, and followed without a second thought as they should be!

Not my favorite. It should be predictable, and here it is. Your fries will ALWAYS be too salty and cold. Your chicken nuggets, cold and rubbery. Your burger will have WAY too much sauce on it.

Not worth it... go across the street to Burger King. You have to watch them there if you order onion rings, to make sure they're hot, but otherwise, they always do better than this McDs.

I know I should like it, and there are a few awesome things about it, but it's always so crowded that I can only give it three stars.

The good:
- the family restroom which is big, useful, and well-equipped
- the kids soft-play area
- BJ's American Grill
- Bahama Breeze
- the game store upstairs

The bad:
- parking
- crime
- crowds
- crazy random people
- teenagers

It's a mall. It doesn't have much soul, but it's clear that an attempt is being made. It's not as rich and snooty as Bellevue Square, and it's not owned by Kemper Freeman (that's worth a 1-star boost!)

It was Wendy's. The food was fresh and hot. The french fries were good, not too salty. The burgers were custom-made the way we wanted them. We did not wait a long time.

I dinged them a star because they gave a party of four who had ordered ten food items TWO napkins. Really? I had to walk inside to get more. While inside, I used the restroom. It was clean enough, nothing amazing but not gross either. Kitchens are usually kept as clean as restrooms, so I felt fine about eating the food they'd made here.

We attracted a nice crowd of seagulls and crows in the parking lot, throwing them bits of bun and french fries. Yes, I know that's evil. It's also a lot of fun.

We were so bummed out... the Mercantile is closed. The sign didn't say what the time frame on the closure would be, but I'm guessing "winter". We were really looking forward to having this as the back-up to the expensive Roosevelt Room at the Lodge. Luckily, the Salmon House came through for us!

Forks is a dive, and I don't give a crap about Twilight, so my family and I joined the ranks of the "trapped on highway 101" tourists and tried to find something decent to eat here. The burger place is closed for some reason, so this place was winning the Yelp-review contest and we decided to try it out.

The decor is a train wreck from start to finish. From the bizarre sliding-glass door entry, to the glued-on log ends in grout monstrosity in the lobby, to the charming old-fashioned lanterns equipped with harsh compact-fluorescent bulbs, I wish they'd just given up before they tried by keeping it plain and simple.

The restrooms were fairly vile (always a bad sign) and they were really cold as well. No hot water. I hope there's hot water in the kitchen, but what I could see of it from the open doorway didn't look much better. We were too hungry to bail.

The menu is long but not very ambitious. We ordered simple food.
3 year old: corn dog and fries
12 year old: grilled cheese sandwich and fries
Me: bacon cheeseburger plain and dry with tater tots
Husband: "hamburger dinner" with mashed potatoes and gravy

The first three meals were competent if uninspired. You really could have gotten that food anywhere. It was fresh, hot Sysco finest. My husband's meal disgusted me but he was thrilled with it. It was literally a plain hamburger cut in half (bun and all), placed on a plate with a big pile of instant mashed potatoes, and then the whole thing was drowned in from-a-packet brown gravy. He said it was school-cafeteria nirvana, but there's no way I would have eaten it.

The salad bar is pathetic-looking, though the icicle lights hanging down past the sneeze shield are a nice touch, as long as you're not a health inspector. I'd skip that course here.

Our waitress was OK, a little bit indifferent really. She spent way more time comparing tattoos with the gals in the next booth over than she did checking on us. What do you expect in Forks?

We didn't sleep here but we checked out the cabins, used the facilities, and walked on the beach. We will definitely come back!

Everything was clean, the staff was friendly, and even the gas-station restroom was very well-maintained. Too bad it's so far away... we'd go more often if the drive was less onerous.

Please do follow the careful signage next to the sidewalk from the lodge to the cabins. There's a huge cliff there, and if you go on the other side of the fence to take photos or something you could well dramatically fall to your death! This is one case where I wish they actually had a more serious fence!

The good thing about the cabins, too, is that you're less likely to be disturbed by your neighbors than you are in a more motel/lodge-configured place.

Ah, the Roosevelt Room restaurant in the Lake Quinault Lodge. So typical of hotel restaurants, you are convenient as hell but desperately overpriced for the mediocre food you serve.

The dining room is truly lovely; views across the lawn (complete with many bird feeders next to the window enjoyed by the colorful rainforest denizens) to the lake are available from nearly all tables as the room is a long narrow "L" shape to maximize this pleasure.

The staff was fine; our waitress was competent, friendly and knowledgeable. When I asked her if the sweet potato pancakes were truly made from scratch or if they were a doctored mix, she knew that they were using a standard pancake mix as a base and she didn't try to hide it or gloss over it. She brought coffee and drinks right away. She didn't fuss about the Groupon (which gave us 15% off).

Breakfast was OK. Better than Denny's, not as good as my favorite breakfast places.
Kid (age 3): silver-dollar pancakes and pork sausage patty - possibly the best breakfast on the table
Kid (age 12): three-egg omelet with ham and veggies -- it was OK but it was one of those cooked-eggs-with-a-pile-of-stuff-in-the-middle meals... I really prefer scrambles to omelets and so does my daughter. It was served with breakfast potatoes* and a homemade biscuit which was apparently awesome (Joanne is not much of a bread lover, and she wanted another one).
Husband: biscuits and gravy -- this was terrifying. The biscuits were homemade and really good but the gravy was clotted it was so thick! Part of the density came from big, generous hunks of the pork sausage, but the gravy was thick and gluey, though John said it did taste good. It was also served with breakfast potatoes*.
Me: I had the All-American, two eggs (I asked for scrambled dry), 2 pork sausage patties, and breakfast potatoes*.

*Breakfast potatoes. These deserve a paragraph all their own. Clearly, they were made at the start of the shift and then waited on a steam table. They were really hot and they'd been fried at some point, giving them nice really-cooked spots, but they were mushy and soggy on our plates. They were also REALLY dark, like darker than the potato skins. The peppers and onions in the potatoes were cooked just fine. These potatoes tasted good but I couldn't get past the texture and the color. I took off two stars for the freakiness of these potatoes -- they seem like such a basic thing to get right.

This place is OK for breakfast, in my book, running $8-10 per person plus drinks. Any other meal, I'd recommend the Salmon House. The Roosevelt Room is Sysco all the way, and it's too damn expensive for lunch and dinner (this cost them another star). It's trying hard to be gourmet and pretty, but at its heart, it's ARAMARK, purveyors of airport meals and prison food.

We took a chance on the Salmon House last weekend when staying at the Lake Quinault Lodge. Based on the reviews here, we were looking for 3.5 stars.

We walked in, and being the off season, it was really quiet. In fact, the front room was empty except for the teeny-tiny salad bar. The server noticed us, greeted us warmly, and took us back into the back dining room which also contained the lounge. OK, let's face it: the decor here is HIDEOUS. The green paint is outdated, the decorations are a mish-mash of lodge plus Christmas plus winter plus tons of Christmas lights all over... not good.

Interestingly, none of us wanted salmon. Instead we had:
3 year old: fettucini alfredo
12 year old: fettucini alfredo with chicken (adult portion)
me: homemade chicken parmesan and spaghetti
husband: homemade chicken cordon bleu

To be blunt about it, the food was fantastic. The plates were pretty, with beautiful fresh borders (see the photo; those were pepper cubes and herbs), without being ridiculous. The chicken parm was the best I've had in ages and ages; lovely homemade sauce, perfect chicken, nice balance of cheese to sauce. It was weird that the offered sides with that were potato or rice; I asked for and got spaghetti with marinara, another clearly-homemade sauce. The vegetables on the plate were dynamite... yellow and green beans and carrots, perfectly fresh and perfectly cooked... I usually look at the vegetables as plate dressing but these were delicious and I actually ate them first.

The cordon bleu is raved about on the menu and honestly, it deserves it. Perfectly cooked, tender and juicy, flavorful with the ham and swiss, it was a delight. It was even good more than 24 hours later as leftovers!! My husband got that with the baked potato and the same stunning veggies as my chicken parm. The baked potato leads to our single complaint about the food... on a $15 plate, Bac-os to go with the potato? Really? The restaurant serves bacon-wrapped scallops and a few other dishes that call for the real deal, so fake bacon bits were really a let-down.

The chicken fettucini was competent with lots of juicy hand-cut chicken pieces and the portion was generous.

These meals were $1-2 per plate more than they would have cost us back home in the Seattle area. Big whoop... I don't know if you've looked at a map, but Lake Quinault is pretty far from anything resembling a city. The food was clearly prepared by someone who cared about it AND who knew what they were doing... we met him on the way out and he was friendly and bright-eyed, honestly pleased that we had enjoyed our dinners.

Our server was friendly and efficient. She was happy to recommend a few dishes and paced the delivery of our meal thoughtfully, not rushing us, but then not delaying with the check when my preschooler got a bit antsy. The back room of the restaurant was just busy enough for a Saturday night in the off-season in a small place.

I would happily eat here again, though I wonder how they'd do when it was really busy... the food is not from the Sysco truck and actually requires preparation from fresh ingredients; I hope the chef has a good sous chef and line cooks, because otherwise I could see some service lapses developing.

The view is awesome so just don't look at the hideous decor. Enjoy your friends and family, the food, and the lake view.

This my review for the lodging side of this business. There's a separate Lake Quinault Lodge entry at 349 S Shore Rd that reflects the Roosevelt Room restaurant inside the lodge.

Yelpers have complained about the staff and an impersonal feel, but we didn't get that this past weekend. We were greeted warmly at reception on Saturday, not given any shit about being there on a Groupon (have gotten this elsewhere in the past), and found our room clean and pleasant. It is the off-off season now (winter, non-holiday) so staffing was a little light, but so was the guest load... fine by me. It was QUIET, wonderfully so, and we tried to keep our kids from ruining that quiet for others. The gal at the desk was very kind when we checked out, as well... no complaints. We didn't interact with any other staff that I can think of, except in the restaurant, but then, we didn't need anything, either.

Several Yelps also complained about cell phone coverage and Internet; here's the deal as of 2012. The entire residential part of the property is blanketed in wireless hotspots and it's free. Bring your laptop, your bluetooth headset, and Skype, and you are in business! My T-mobile phone roamed to AT&T and I had enough signal to make a call in most places I checked but I just turned the damned thing off! Ahhhhhh.

We stayed in the Lakeside building on the second floor towards the east end. We had neighbors on one side of us and above us; people are right, you can hear them talk, run the shower, and so on, but so what? It was less than $100/night, it was spotlessly clean, the beds were really comfy, and you can't beat the location or view.

Here's a thought... consider it camping with a balcony, clean, dry bed and pillows, and proper, private running-water facilities... it doesn't claim to be or pretend to be a five-star resort. Consider where you are and that you could be in a tent swatting mosquitoes, with no shower and a pit toilet to look forward to... and consider the $90 money WELL spent!

The swimming pool and game room downstairs in the main building were a surprise. That pool is one of the nicest I've used in a hotel anywhere in the world... it was sparkling clean (everything on the property was, I really have to give them props for that), wonderfully warm (probably 89 or 90F, I'd guess), and actually has a REAL deep end (8') so swimming is not completely boring. The changing rooms and sauna were simple but clean and appropriate. I do think they could have had bigger towels and more of them for the pool area, but it was towards the end of the day on the off season, and we didn't go without, so I'll pipe down. Having a classic Williams pinball machine, several old video games, billiards, foosball, and other game tables in the game room was really awesome. You don't see that very often.

The lodge fireplace was warm and inviting, though the combo of propane flames and giant chunk of wood was a little odd... is that a real fire, or a fake one? A real one, of course, but it's not quite a glowing pile of hardwood embers either. That gathering room is nice... huge, high ceilings, authentic lodge decor without going over the edge, and plenty of comfortable tables, sofas, and chairs, not to mention acreage of rug in front of the fire to flop down on if that's your thing. The jigsaw puzzle collection was pretty good and the board game selection was crap; bring your own if that's your interest. I loved walking around and looking at the old photographs of the place.

I can imagine this place earning a bit more mixed reviews in high season. They must bring in some seasonal, minimum-wage staff and that can depersonalize any interactions you have with them and younger, less experienced staff often don't have the confidence or knowledge to be really helpful. Parking could easily get tight; there are 92 guest rooms but are there really 92 parking spots? I guess there are, but I didn't notice them all. And with all the rooms full, the noise from neighbors might be a bigger issue. It wouldn't help that there are no phones in the rooms because you can't just call the front desk to bitch about someone anonymously, you'd either have to WALK to the front desk to complain or bang on the wall, ceiling, or a neighbor's door to confront them in person, something many of us would be too chicken or too lazy to do. LOL It's fancy camping... just talk to them loudly and ask them to be quieter; since you can hear them, they can also hear you! I don't mind this but YMMV and you should assess what's important to you so you're not disappointed.

My five stars went to four because:
- thin walls could be a problem in high season
- parking might get too crowded when busy
- no screen door on the balcony slider means you can't sleep with the door open for the real delicious fresh air (mosquitoes!)
- the restaurant is so expensive that it presents a logistical challenge to those not willing to shell out $$$