Disappointment

Delciious meal at Cucina, a new restaurant in Woodstock, NY. Appetizer (a beet dish), main course (salmon), dessert (chocolate).

Eager to return there the next weekend.

Appetizer: squid (too soft--and the sauce was unusually sweet), the main course (chicken dish) tough and tasteless. Skipped dessert. A shock, a disappointment.

Even good restaurants, I know, screw up occasionally. But the drop-off in quality was startling. May never return there. (Service was excellent, though.)

Sometimes a restaurant goes downhill, I suspect, because--to economize--the chef takes shortcuts. I remember eating a chicken dish at a restaurant in Hackensack that was in trouble-and I couldn't taste any chicken! The same restaurant surreptitiously charged an automatic tip on our group--of just four people!

Just got an email from Miss Lucy's Kitchen, a restaurant in Saugerties--I had written about leaving when my meal finally arrived, to see a movie that was just starting. After telling the waiter I was in a hurry--and paying the check in advance. That's happened before. Why do some restaurants ignore you when you say you're in a hurry? And how come, sometimes, other diners--who camne in later--are served before you are, although you ordered a simple dish?