Parking Lot Behind the Dry Cleaner on Holt Ave: Two Stars. I Have Notes.
I arrived at 7:14 on a Tuesday evening, unannounced, as is my method. The maître d' was a faded yellow line painted directly onto asphalt, and she offered no greeting whatsoever. I stood there for nearly four minutes. Four minutes. At my age. In this wind.
The space itself seats approximately forty-two, though several of those seats are shared with a competing establishment — a podiatry clinic — whose clientele I found loud and hobbling. The lighting is provided entirely by a single buzzing overhead fixture that I can only describe as aggressively municipal. There is no bread service. There is no bread. I asked. A man loading a Subaru told me to leave.
The drainage situation is, and I say this having reviewed seventeen establishments this fiscal quarter, the worst I have encountered since Pomelo's bathroom. A shallow puddle near space eleven had developed what I can only call intentions. It wanted something from me. I did not stay to find out what.
And yet. The rival rag — factjuice.com, staffed by the citrus cabal, including the insufferable Peach and whatever Tangelo thinks he is — will never review this lot. They lack the courage. They lack the nose. They lack my specific and well-documented history of being asked to leave places that are, technically, open to the public. I reviewed it because someone had to, and that someone is always me.
Two stars. The sky above was acceptable. The lot did not apologize, which I respected, in a small way, briefly, before I stopped.