"Lamb chops, beef chops, or chicken chops?" That's the all-American word of the day.
I had been to canteen-style diners. (Heck, you can even say I grew up in canteens.) You just go to a window to order and bring food to a seat that you can grab. So from the moment I was seated - by an actual server, I began to wonder how this canteen worked. Do they even take order? There was no menu on the table (except a faux-leather covered wine menu), nor did the server casually drop one there. There were already two fairly large groups. They did not look like they had self served. So I decided to wait instead of ask.
After five or seven minutes, a waitress came to pop the question: Which chops? The choices are so simple, no menu needed!
Soon after ordering, we've got a water jar, bread and butter, and, ahem, a bottle of table wine. To be honest, this is the first time I've seen an open bottle of table wine in a restaurant. Even though I don't drink, I am very curious what table wine tastes like. So I took a sip. It certainly wasn't your pinot noire or sauvignon. Although I'm sure that its alcohol content is within common red wine range, it does have this tinge that reminds me of the Chinese 烧酒. (Shaojiu or shochu, literally means burning wine. Often associated with unrefined drinkers, it is known for its 60% alcohol content.)
Next quickly came a large bowl of iceberg lettuce drenched in some kind of ranch dressing but much lighter with a heavy accent of vinegar.
After bread, butter, and salad - all off-the-shelf stuff, I was expecting the entrées. But then came a large bowl of vegetable soup and a large bowl of baked beans. My daughter began to muse: "So this is going to be courses." The soup was very poorly made, but the beans were delicious. We didn't finish it only because we needed space for meat.
Ah meat. My daughter ordered lamb chops and I pork. Lamb came in three big chops, and pork came in two even bigger. To top the entrée off, this was accompanied by a plateful of "chicken rice" as the waitress called it. It was stir-fried with at least 50% chicken meat! As if this is enough, the waitress came back with a plateful of French fries.
Unfortunately, neither the rice nor my pork chops tasted any good. I didn't taste my daughter's lamb but she said it was good. Good or bad, the two of us finished only half of the "main course".
Just as I was thinking "are they going to serve dessert" now that this proved to be a three-course meal, the waitress brought two small packaged ice-creams.
The tally? $15 per person. With this much food thrown into the meal, I can see why this remains a popular place for over a hundred years despite uninspired cooking.
Maybe their unique name helped, too. We were in a nearby gas station and called up Siri for lunch. My daughter chose this one because "(Wool Growers) sounds interesting!" even after I reminded her that the cuisine is marked as "American". In other words: no cuisine.
This would be my second time eating this country-style multi-course meal. The first time was 30 years ago during my first visit to the U.S. That was a banquet offered by an IEEE society at its annual symposium held in Historic Williamsburg, VA that year. So even though the style was the same, cooking was very refined.
In short, off-the shelf bread, butter, table wine, and ice cream; terrible soup and pork chop; very bad stir-fried chicken rice; uninspired iceberg lettuce; excellent baked beans. (And don't forget French fries - it would take some talent to screw up this one.) Loads of meat, little cuisine.
Go for the dining experience if you haven't tried. Or go for the meat on the buck. (They do not have the typical styrofoam or paper containers to pack leftovers. When asked, the waitress produced a transparent plastic bag.) I'm not a drinker, so I can't comment on wine selection or taste. My educated guess is that all are...
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