Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Shopsy's

LOCATION: 96 Richmond West (Sharaton Centre.... not correct spelling. Cent-err, nor cent-tray!) Toronto, Canada
TYPE OF FOOD: Deli
REVIEW: Hotel restaurants are very tricky territory. It's equal to when the president does something groundbreaking and the whole country gets angry at him for no real reason and wants to throw out all of the good politicians for "change" and despite all of truth being thrown in the faces of everyone by the good guys, the people still think it's total bull honkey and throw it by the side the road and you're the same party as the president and you can do nothing but put your hands over your face and try to avoid seeing all of your politicians getting picked off one by one: you try to remain hopeful and go on in.

Glancing on the ink that formed the letters that appeared on the paper which is the menu, I wondered what I should chew, swallow, and convert into waste matter. Should I get the Shopsy's Original Hotdog (would you like Swiss and bacon with that?)? How about the Grilled Vegetable sandwich (hmm.... vegetables, goat cheese, arugula, and black olive tapenade on focaccia... yum!)? Or maybe the Kilkenny Fish and Chips (because some random city in Ireland totally has to do with some hotel deli in Canada)? I decided upon a corned beef sandwich on wheat and I waited. And waited. And waited. And waited. And waited. One. Whole. Hour. For. Smoked. Corn. Beef. With. Lettuce. Finally. After. A. While. Of. Nonstop. Annoyance. And. Nearly. Leaving. The. Sandwich. Got. To. The. Table.

The sandwich's meat was like eating the food embodiment of all of Ed Wood's films combined. The lettuce was like "Pluto Nash", the bread like "Troll 2" (he hates the sandwich! And now he's going on a rant! Oh my GOOOOOODDDDDDDDD!). The sandwich was big, but that doesn't make up a single character about how the sandwich was a hot pile of absolute bad sitting on my plate. With absolutely bad food dissolving in my system, I got up and left, not looking back or hesitating the slightest distance between my thumb and index finger.

SERVICE: The service was nice, very nice, very, very nice, especially when you factor in the fact that he took our orders, walked away from the table, and left us waiting for an hour and never told us anything about anything.... but there were very, very nice.

ATMOSPHERE: The atmosphere was normal, and I can fully throw myself behind this, because I was looking around so frequently, trying to distract myself from my growling stomach. Random black-and-white pictures (they're always at every regional chain I go to..... what does some random car from the 40's have to do with anything? Harry Truman?) were spread over the walls like the ads for voting Yes on Question 1 are on the television (okay... you don't want another tax? Well, if you don't want better roads, education, buildings, health care, and life, just so that you can have another Budweiser, go ahead, that's perfectly logical!). The floors, along with the bathroom, were absolutely clean. And I know that. I was looking around for over an hour.

PRICE: Twelve dollars for corned beef and lettuce on wheat. Twelve dollars. But it was a big portion. So, big portions make up the twelve dollars, right? Funny thing though. Despite the big portions on my plate, there was no such thing in my stomach. Huh.

RATING: Shopsy's is what you would expect a hotel restaurant to be: as horrible as the idea of Question 3. With an hour long wait for a corned beef sandwich, random black-and-white pictures, bad quality food, disappointing service, and "big portions", you have to wonder where their ideas went. Cough, cough, Charlie Baker, Tim Cahill, Scott Brown, Jennifer Nassour, Jeanne Kangas, Brandy Jones, Jr., Richard R. Tisrei, Bill Campbell, Jim McKenna, Karyn Polito, Mary Connaughton, cough, cough. Oh, sorry. My computer must have done that. Flopsy's gets a-oh, sorry. Shopsy's gets a one out of five.