Part One: Falling in Love
Friend and I
found ourselves on Grove Avenue
yesterday with two missions in mind: to
see a movie and have some dinner afterwards.
Movie was
terrific, as was the company. There’s
nothing like a “friend of many years.”
For dinner
after the movie, we found ourselves at the Continental Westhampton. What a great stroke of luck! Atmosphere had that “cool diner” groove going
on. Although they were quite busy, the
service was great.
Friend and I
each had a different 10” hand-tossed pizza.
OH MY GOODNESS! “Goodness” being
the operative word. Both were PILED with
assorted toppings and were reasonably priced ($9-11) and were (almost) more
than we could eat in one sitting. But it
was soooo good, we just “made” ourselves keep on.
The lunch and
dinner menu is available online at:
I bet this
would be a great place to go and get “juiced” before seeing “Rocky Horror” then
come back after the show to hang out.
I understand
they serve brunch as well, but couldn’t find that menu online. I have no reservations (a little “restaurant
pun” there!) about suggesting that The Mimosa Madames try brunch there. The Continental Westhampton is on my “list of
places to try for brunch” with my fellow Madames.
Part Two: Falling (slightly) out of love
So after falling soooo in love with The Continental
Westhampton (the CW from here on because I’m lazy) I had an opportunity to go
out to dinner with The Other Alison (TOA) and told her we just HAD to go
there. It was a Tuesday night, around
6:00. That place was jumpin! The hostess told us we would have about a
20-25 minute wait. Not usually one
willing to wait, I made an exception to my rule because the food had been so
good the time before and TOA was raving about their vodka limeaide. Boy was she onto something! Totally my new favorite thing in life!! OH EM
GEE!! We had a drink at the bar and
waited (and waited) for our table. The
bartender had a very busy bar to deal with, and he was right on point taking
care of everyone and making it look easy.
We ordered another drink while we were waiting. Bartender (Cody?) thought we’d waited just
“that” much too long, so he comped us our second drink. Does it get any better than that? Yummm….
While we were loving our drinkypoos, we split an appetizer
of muscles that were lovely and cooked in the house red sauce. In that sauce were some chunks of
chorizo. What a terrific surprise!
So now we’ve waited about 30 minutes for our table, both
hungry and wondering what the heck, ya know.
I approached to hostess and asked when we could expect to be
seated. She said we would be “next” to
be seated. “Mmmmm hmmm,” I thought
skeptically. Upon learning our ETA to be
seated, TOA (who is much better at just rolling with it than I) suggested we go
ahead and order our dinner, by the time it was ready we’d be at her table.
TOA ordered the “Atomic” pizza, which had every mushroom
known to man on it. It took me a while
to make the connection between the name “Atomic” and “mushrooms, “ but then I
had one of those “V8” moments where I smacked myself on the forehead and went
“D’oh!”.
I ordered the Mediterrean pizza, which is what my friend
Dawn had when we were there a few nights ago.
I can’t remember if she had the lamb on it, but I was definitely willing
to spend the extra $3 to try it.
A little over 40 minutes later, we were seated at a table
(AFTER someone else was seated, so were NOT the “next” ones to be seated). I saw a waiter come over to the bar with two
pizzas and wait a minute to ask the bartender who the pizzas belonged to. I felt like just going over to get him and
tell him they were ours, for some reason I decided this would be a good time to
not act bitchy. He made his way back to
us a couple minutes later. TOA was
absolutely delighted with her pizza.
This is the part where I fell a little bit out of love with the CW
because my pizza had clearly sat for a few minutes before even being brought
out to the bar and then eventually made its way to our table. Oddly, TOA’s pizza was hot and fresh. According to TOA, her pizza was
wonderful. Even overlooking the fact
that my pizza wasn’t served as hot as it should, it just wasn’t quite up to
snuff. It seemed like the ingredients
(feta, fresh spinach leaves, sliced olive halves, and tomato slices) were just
thrown on. The lamb slices seemed like
an afterthought (like “OOPS! I forgot to put the lamb on!”) because they were
totally just piled on top. I wasn’t
thinking about the saltiness that would be in both the feta and the olives, so
that’s my own damn fault. But still…….
Since we had minimal (and I MINIMAL) attention from any
waitstaff, a tip relevant to that degree of service was left at the table. One the way out, I caught bartender’s
attention and slipped him some cash.
He’d done all the work, so in the considered opinions of both TOA and
myself, we felt that he deserved the lion’s share of tip.
As an aside, I
gathered that they’ve recently done some sort of renovations at the CW. Apparently, some of that renovation included
taking some seating space out. That just
seems like a mistake. There were a few
tables outside, but who wants to sit out there when it’s 100 flippin’ degrees
out? Some people did, but not this
intrepid reporter.
Do I still want to leave the CW on my “must try for brunch”
list? Heck yeah.
