Lisa "Biblyotheke" R.'s Profile

TheHusband and I stumbled on this place on a Monday afternoon looking for another store on 29th street and spent a few happy hours browsing. Front parking lot was filled and the place was hopping during mid-afternoon, so that should tell you something.   Staff was friendly and will hold your picks at the cash register until you check out and will occasionally check in on you as you browse.

Lots and lots of dealers are showcased here and there is literally a little of everything from pottery/china to vintage toys/dolls to furniture and jewelry and back again. Since each spot is claimed by a dealer, there is no organization or grouping of items (say jewelry in one spot, furniture in another, records over there). Plan on spending an hour or so just to walk the place looking at everything.

While there seemed to be a little of everything (collectible glass, barber's chairs (yes, plural), turn of the century phonographs, etc), there seemed to be very little in in clothing, bags/luggage and books. TheHusband and I are not seasoned antiquers (we're buying a 1920s house that we need to fill with furniture so we've just literally begun looking) so this may be a common thing but I found it interesting.

Most of the furniture was located in the bottom floor, and the selection was okay. Some styles were grouped together and styled with items from that era, which was a lot of fun, but we really didn't see anything that said BUY us. Because it is dealer independent, some prices were like, "HAH. You're kidding right?" and others were like, "Woah, that's a damned steal."

The inconsistency of pricing (again since it is dealer independent) was overwhelming, so you're not quite sure if what you're buying is a good deal or buying a reproduction.

I marked this a 3/5 because of the overwhelming amount of products, the inconsistency in pricing, organization of goods was a bit of a mess if you're new. I plan on going back because the staff was really nice and helpful, there IS a lot of stuff to go through and will revise my review on future adventures.

Update: 1/3/2011: TheHusband and I went to several other antique malls in the area after this one and what really stood out about this place over the rest is that it reminds me of an over picked flea market where as the other malls, not so much. By this I mean that it seems because of location and traffic that it gets loads of people stopping by but the place is a mess as compared to other antique malls. I'm not sure who is responsible for straightening the products/items up but man this place is mess-y!

Average.

As this is one of two in the state of Michigan, I had no idea it was a chain until my husband pointed out that advertising, promotions and set-up is typical of chain restaurants. Also, checking their website concurred that yes, this is a chain.

As many reviewers touched upon, it also doubles as a sport's bar, which, to me, signals this chain is best described as confused. They are throwing all elements of successful businesses into one pot hoping that something works and attempting to appeal to wide range of people but we felt that it was too mediocre at best and should concentrate on specializing with one thing.

We ordered:
Pretzel bones for appetizer
Each ordered the 3 item "Create Your Own Combo" with two sides. TheHusband got the smoked sausage, brisket and pulled pork. I got the smoked sausage, brisket and chicken tenders.  The chicken tenders were "sauced" in brown sugar sauce.

The pretzel bones were four pieces of long soft pretzels with a trio of sauces, which they were selling for $7.99. While we adored the mustard sauce, the other two were tasteless. And for $7.99, we're paying $2 a pretzel and to be honest, this appetizer would be better priced at $3.99 or $4.99 as it's not worth the nearly double digit price tag as it's pretty obvious the pretzels are frozen and not fresh. Or they should double the amount of pretzels for that price.

The "Create your own combos" are HUGE. Literally, we assumed that as it as a combo, it would be a sampler of each of the items we choose (hence why we picked 3 items, not 2 as we were starving) and these were individual meal portions. So, a lot of food. I had the loaded baked potato and coleslaw as my sides, TheHusband had the baked beans and fries.

Meat:
We both loved the sausage (heh.) and both felt the brisket was too fatty and was pretty tasteless. TheHusband felt the pulled pork was simply average and the chicken tenders in the brown sugar sauce was amazing.  

Sides:
Coleslaw is cream based and was decent and the loaded baked potato tasted like it was microwaved and since I'm paying extra for it (as it was considered a "fancy side" and thus an upgrade to the meal), I was disappointed to see it was on the small side. (They are charging $3.99 for it ala carte and if I had ordered it ala carte and received it as such, I'd send it back to the kitchen for a new one).

Ambiance was okay - as others pointed out, loads of televisions showing sports everywhere.

So overall: It was okay. A few great items, plenty of average ones, pricing on the high side for what you're getting. I would NOT recommend this place if you're a BBQ aficionado or looking for authenticity.

Oh Yelp, I swear you have the tastebuds of a philistine. Why is it every time we go to a 4+ star rated restaurant, our experience is so severely lacking that I'm becoming convinced that these reviews are paid for?

Pizzallica now falls into that category.

Ordered: Chicago style pizza with pepperoni and a large antipasto salad.

Cons:
Pizza:  Undercooked. Severely undercooked to the point that middle of the pizza was still raw dough. Called Pizzallica and the person who answered said, "Oh, I thought it didn't look done when I pulled it out of the oven." Okay, if it didn't look done then why in Nigel's name did you send it out to your customers?

And the attitude? Really? Was it necessary to cop an attitude with me when I asked you what we should do with the half-cooked (first) pizza?  

When the second pizza arrived, it visually look and taste as if it was cooked more thoroughly but it wasn't hot.  This is extremely puzzling as we live less than a mile from the joint and the delivery of the pizza took about an hour.

Antipasto salad: We ordered a large and it was delivered in a very shallow container, which we found to be on the small side. Antipasto is typically meats, cheese, olives, jalepenos on ice berg lettuce. This was meats, cheeses on a spring mix with a giant tomato. Odd pairing, not necessairly BAD just odd. But we were turned off by smallness of the salad and the forgetting of the dressing.

Pros:
Pizzallica replaced our pizza for free, though with attitude.
Sauce is sweet, not terribly acidic as most pizza sauces tend to be.
Crust is different and I like how it's almost chewy.

So sauce and crust are tasty, but the attitude about an inferior product, smallness of the salad and we are just totally turned off by this place.

This is nothing Belgian or inspired about the food. Their pomme frites are NOT pomme frites: Bastone's "version" is shoestring potatoes that are NOT "100% fresh" but obviously frozen from a bag.  The fries were cut far too thin and were limp and tasteless.  Pomme frites are hearty fries that have been 2x fried - I have no idea what the hell Bastone thinks  they are shilling but these are not pomme frites.

The garlic mayo was uninspired. I left almost all of my portion on my plate.

Having spent considerable amount of time in Belgium with my husband on our honeymoon, we ate our weight in pomme frites from street vendors on a daily basis. How truly disappointing to get back home, discover a "Belgian restaurant" only to see that it's been gringofied and or the chef is utterly and horribly confused.

Another example: our Au Poivre sauce for our steaks contained mushrooms. Um, no? Even the waitress was confused when she brought our plates out.  And perhaps that was part of the problem - instead of giving us fresh plates of "pomme frites" with the steak, instead they nuked it while they re-did the steaks. Gross. Also, the Au Poivre sauce was made from a powder not from scratch.

So we ordered: 2 fillet with pomme frites and Au Poivre sauce, cooked medium. After scraping off the Au Poivre sauce and ditching the fries, the steaks were good. Meat was tender and cooked properly (medium-medium rare). My husband and another friend ordered Caesar salads and they said those were tasty.

The beer: My friend and I both ordered the six flight and apparently you can swap out the standard on top with seasonals if you so choose. I swapped out the pilsner for a seasonal and the waitress seemed overly confused and insisting that I could only get six unless I wanted to go with the seven. When I told her, again, that I was swapping out the pilsner for one of the seasonals, again, she argued with me that would be a 7 flight not a 6. So then I said, can I swap out one of the regular beers in the flight for a seasonal? She said yes and I said, okay, I want to swap out the pilsner for the seasonal. I kept rewording this a few times before she figured out that I wanted to swap out a pilsner for the seasonal.

I'm getting beyond frustrated of places that claim to a specific type of cooking and either having eaten that type of food extensively or having been to the region the food is from, going to the restaurants and discovering it is NO WHERE NEAR what they claim it to be. If you've been to Belgium, this place will disappoint you and make you cry.

And if this is the same owners who own Cafe Habana: Who ever told you to go into the food business with your "concept style food bars" should have been taken out  back and shot.

While I think the concept is great, I saw one of the cab drivers roll down his window and toss out a bunch of trash onto the street as he was leaving the Speedway at 12 Mile/Rochester.  

While the cab company may have good intentions, how about schooling their drivers in being green themselves?

On a recent trip to Louisville, Toast was recommended as one of the go-to places for breakfast/brunch/lunch.  

One thing we discovered while in Louisville is that CALL AHEAD AND MAKE A RESERVATION! Seemingly, every restaurant in the area (regardless of price point or food type) takes reservations. I wish I had known this -- our intial told 20 minute wait (which was acceptable) turned into nearly an hour as people who had the foresight to call ahead to make reservations did so and were seated immediately.

The food, however, was not that great but it was not terrible. The place was packed and is set up more like an open cafeteria than a restaurant (table seating wise).  Service was pretty quick, coffee flowed but the food was just average. The ambiance is pretty sterile (other than the colors on the walls) so unless they are slipping something into certain items to convince people of the hype, this is more of a last alternative rather than the first place to go to for breakfast.

I wish I could say that this place lived up to the expectations that everyone has written about, but as I've come to expect on Yelp reviews, people rate based on one singular thing not the overall experience.

Thus, If you're looking for authentic Cuban food, this is NOT the place. Also keep in mind that this place is owned (or at least has some association with) by the same people who own Vinotecca and other boutique eateries, which lends to the idea that this is more of a "What we THINK Cuban food is" as opposed to "What Cuban food REALLY is."

There were four of us for dinner on  a Saturday night. The place was half-empty, so were immediately seated.  Our server was prompt and on the ball -- except for the 20 minute delay in the mojito, so no complaints about the service.

Drinks:
Mojito, Cuban coffee, and the flight of beers.
Mojito: This arrived 20 minutes after ordering (again, the place was not busy, but since they share space with Vinotecca, the bar orders probably go through them) and tasted awful.  It tasted of tonic water and mint, no rum to be found.
Cuban Coffee: This is pretty simple to make: it's espresso and sugar. What I received is just  espresso in an espresso cup NO sugar, which negates the "sweet" descriptor from "dark, strong and sweet" on their menu.  Thankfully, sugar packets are on the table. Espresso was also NOT top notch.

Flight of beers: Were meet with seal of approval. The beer is from Bastone and the flight glasses were fairly decent sized for the price.

Appetizer:
Pan Cubano (grilled Cuban bread with chimichurri) -- The one constant thing you'll see for people reviewing this place is discussion on how great the chimichurri is, which IS true - it's pretty good stuff. BUT, we ordered two plates of this appetizer: The first one, they sliced up an entire loaf of the bread but did not grill it and the second plate had less than half the amount of bread and WAS grilled.  

DINNER:
Arroz con Pollo, Carne Asada (x2) and Baja Burrito.

Arroz con Pollo was bland and had no spice to it. It was like someone had dumped salsa on chicken and called it good.

One Carne Asada was medium and the other medium rare, both though the meat was "eh", and one had a lot of fat on it, which was surprising since this is not typical of hanger beef.  

The Baja Burrito was "okay" but not spectactular.

Bottom line: Just because you sell photos of Cuba and have some vague resemblance to Cuban music  playing in the background does not equate "authenticity."  This seems to be another case of where authentic cuisine is gringoized or faked to create a niche resturant where the locals won't know any better.  In that aspect, they succeeded.

On a recent visit to see my Aunts, they decided to treat us to the buffet lunch at China Lite. Years ago, and I'm talking about a decade or more ago, I remember this place used to be hoppin' and the take out was excellent. I am not sure if the owners had changed hands, but when we came in it was buffet only and it seemed that was all you could get for the meal.

The buffet is neither the greatest nor the worst: 6-7 main dishes, sides like egg rolls, rice, wonton soup, are available. Despite coming directly from the kitchen, food was not piping hot even after being under heat lamps and on hot serving stations. You have to ask for white rice, if you are not partial to brown, and there is steam plates with kid-friendly food such as chicken nuggets and fries. For the price, it's not /bad/ but it's not great either. This is not the place I remember from ages ago but according to my Aunts, if you want decent Chinese in Port Huron, this is where you go.

This place got great reviews on other review sites, so we took two of my fiance's shirts to get pressed and to have my bathrobe repaired (seam had torn down the side).  I was a bit concerned about the robe as it was my father's and I inherited it when he passed away nearly a decade ago and it was not in the best condition.

Pros:
Cheap: Under $2 per shirt  and also a few bucks to repair the ripped seam.

Cons:
- Does not accept credit card payment under $10. Our bill was about $7 after tax, TheFiance told the clerk to just charge the $10 and they refused to it and with no ATMs near-by, this became problematic. Finally, the clerk did the "Just this one time" bit and charged for exact amount on the credit card -- but NO SIGNS are posted anywhere that there is a $10 minimum for credit.
- The dress shirts, which were pressed for a wedding and another special occasion, we noticed were actually pressed with creases  not part of the shirt and they pressed OVER the buttons so that there were button indentations on the shirt.  It was like instead of  straightening out the shirt to press it clean, if there was a crease, it was left. HOrrible pressing service.
- They repaired the seam on the robe but left close to 1.5 inches of seam material on the inside, which was weird. There were also a lot of loose threads that were sewn into the seam and left dangling. It was like they had extra threading was stuck on someone's arm who was doing the sewing, those threads got stuck in the seam as it was being sewed and they didn't think to remove the threads.

We will never go back to this place again.

Food was neither spectacular or terrible, merely so-so. On a weekend night, the place was almost empty during date hours which was interesting. Portions were large enough that we ended up taking home leftovers which reheated nicely the next day. Cost was on par with the food, so that wasn't a shocker.  Service seemed slow despite the half-empty status and the waitress seemed neither friendly or rude, just seemed bored to be there. Friends we were dining with love this place but we were not impressed with it.