Food Review; Crawford’s – DT Sioux Falls

I’m not a ‘star’ kinda reviewer, but if there was a star shaped like a turd, I would give Crawford’s four of them.

I was skeptical about Crawford’s for awhile, because for one, the owner refused to tear down a shit hole empty hotel for years and almost got his liquor license denied for his new place because of it. AND I have also heard second hand critics tell me that they can’t cook a meal to save their life.

But, like most schmucks in this town, I wanted to try the new place.

INTERIOR

The interior is fantastic, and almost swanky with a girl touch. Local designer, Sarah Dewitt designed the place, and you can tell if you are familiar with her work. While I am not a huge fan, I do like Sarah’s middle eastern influence even though I made fun of the bedazzler wallpaper jewels and leather placemats.

SERVICE

I guess I could dress this up nicely, but I won’t. Slower then fuck. I know, I know, I guess when you go to a nice place that’s how it is, but I call bullshit on that concept. You should always have at least a 1 minute greet and a drink order. After five minutes a waitress finally brought us water, then ran away before I could order a drink. When we finally ordered a drink, that took a long time (5-10 minutes?) This is uncalled for. As I told someone once, I don’t care how much you fuck up after my drink order, you just better get it fast and right. Crawford’s: FAIL.

We also had a meal problem, that we will discuss later, but I was puzzled by the lack of management, not sure if there is a manager, they allowed the server to handle the situation. A server should NEVER deal with these situations. I eat out a lot, nice places, and not so nice places, and I have NEVER had a server handle a complaint. It’s sketchy and unprofessional.

I do think our server was good, even though I did not catch her name, but she needed to be faster, she also needed to stop sugar coating the problems. I understand, you don’t cook the food, don’t defend the cooks, throw them under bus as much as possible, gawd knows I do. The patrons will never see them and they don’t get tips, it does not matter.

FOOD

Here is where the problem lies at Crawford’s. You can have a swanky place, a good liquor and wine menu, but you can’t really skimp when it comes to food, especially since you are about 20% more expensive then Minerva’s and 10% more expensive then my favorite DT restaurant, Parker’s. See, if you were serving chopped steak and chili for $4 a plate, I would understand. But when you are asking $5 for a lettuce salad and $30 an entree, you needs to get the shit right! Let me say this again: you needs to get the shit right!

I will say this, the spinach dip was fantastic, it had paprika and sun dried tomatoes in it (I think) and the bread with it was nice and crisp on the outside and soft in the middle (I can’t stand Gardetto’s hard toast like bread w/spinach dip) The escargot was different, but tasty, it was prepared with the normal garlic butter but was wrapped in a puff pastry and had a balsamic glaze. Awesome. Balsamic is something that more chefs are using these days on meats to spice them up, and I like it.

Our entree presentation was good, but our food was overcooked. One of us ordered a hamburger, and it was the best thing at the table. I ordered Salmon, overcooked and dry. My asparagus (which I love) was cold and I substituted steak fries for my risotto, also undercooked and cold. One other person at the table ordered the pork wellington, which looked fantastic, but the chops were cooked to sandpaper dryness, I even tried them and could barely chew down the piece. We had to convince our waitress to show the chef how overcooked they were. But instead of taking them off the bill, even though my friend only had two bites, they made her pay for it and gave her a gift certificate (remember how I talked about the manager interaction).

How would I have handled it? Well, first off, the waitress admitted that the cook overcooked it after showing it to him. So why would we have to pay for it? I would have took it off the bill and offered a free dessert or drink. I am still baffled why my friend had to pay for a meal that was overcooked and she did not eat? And on top of it wasn’t even boxed up for her cat?

Crawford’s may be expensive and swanky but the entrees suck, unless you like overcooked, dry, cold food that takes forever to get, and hey, maybe that’s why it is overcooked :).

I would go back for a drink and an app, but I refuse to eat dinner there ever again.