Whistle Binkies On the Lake — Restaurant in Rochester

Me: "Excuse me. Your orange juice is fermented. It's rotten." Server: "Oh. So you want something else?" Me: "Do you have 'good' orange juice?" Server: "That's all we have." Me: "I'll have water please."

It was a busy Sunday brunch out on the frosty lake. Not terribly busy as if the overflow rooms were packed, but busy enough. With the excitement of football looming in the air, rowdy fans blowing horns and beating the occasional drum, the restaurant was in full swing and the buffet line was plump with fattening fare. This is definitely the place for hardcore football fans to gather.

We arrived to a sign that directed its customers to self seating. It took our server about ten minutes to spot us, though when she did, she promptly headed in our direction. She slapped some menus on the table, took our drink order, and we requested the brunch buffet. She quickly removed the menus and pointed to the food line.

The presentation was quite attractive though the selections offered were fairly standard. Unseasoned eggs with cheese, unseasoned hash browns with cheese, French toast on white loaf, mini waffles, cheap sausage links, no frills bacon, ham, small poorly cleaned mussels in a spicy mystery sauce, and a fairly decent tri-color tomato based tortellini.

Pros: Fresh sliced ham, mini waffles, unlimited bacon, excellent self-serve bloody Mary bar. Cons: Everything else.

Let's start with the pie. I've had one terrible pie on my life: Mincemeat. The cherry pie here is a close runner up. How do you screw up cherry pie? Take a frozen crust with nothing added, dump a can of generic cherry pie filling into it, top with another flavorless pie crust dusted with...still nothing. Voilà! I honestly didn't think it possible to wreck something supposedly un-wreckable.

The sausage links were...fecal. Apparently only the cheapest pork from a factory farm will do. Good thing they went well with the foamy, rotten, and possibly alcoholic by now, orange juice I sipped in moderation. Remember kids, flavorless eggs and hash browns are okay as long as you add cheese. Am I being harsh? Only as harsh as the all-too-evident apathy from our server who also couldn't offer refills.

Did I tip her? Yeah. But it didn't stop me from being wrenched with guilt for not tipping the guy at the China buffet the other day because his efforts made hers seem downright sad. All in all, I wouldn't return here with my family, it was too loud and the service was piss poor for $13 a plate. I would however come back for beers, bloodies, and football. Heck, I'd even recommend it to the guys at Wes' lunch table...they'll...

I've never had a bad meal at whistle binkies. We came in to eat after golfing at oak summit tonight and bellied up to the bar. Two very friendly and eager to serve bartenders were there to get our drink orders and answer questions about the menu. I ordered the roadhouse melt, which was out of this world! The sliced roast beef was as tender as possible and had such amazing flavor on its own. Add carmelized onions, Chipotle mayo, provolone cheese and banana peppers, in-between grilled sourdough bread the combination as I said was out of this world! They even allowed me to get onion rings instead of fries. My first time having there onion rings and they are hand battered, not frozen, and were the best onion rings I've ever had. My only negative comments would be that I requested no banana peppers, ended up having to pick those off, not a big deal. Also, and this is something I've noticed with other items I've ordered, several times, the onions aren't actually caramelized, they've just been sweated. Which is a huge difference when it comes to the end flavor, seems like they're rushing the dishes out to fast to get the actual caramelization on the onions. Otherwise...

Great atmosphere. Only down-side was the food order. Had dry rub bone-in wings and sweet potato fries. I mentioned to the waiter specifically that it was ok if one came out before the other if that increased the odds of them being hot. I know cooks have some choices....do I throw in the fries first to get them off my mind so I can work on "more important things" or the other choice of dropping them in the fryer a bit later so they end up being ready at the same time as the rest of the meal. However, whatever effort is put in, that all can be lost if it sits under the warming lights for 10 minutes waiting for someone to grab it and deliver it to the table. End result in my case......cold sweet potato fries. By the way, there's nothing better than hot fries and nothing worse than cold fries. Now the dry rub wings......if you get rave reviews, that's awesome. Not at all like the rest of the world makes dry rub wings...was looking for a bit of that crispy outer texture, but these are just different. Beer was cold and again, great atmosphere. Definitely go back, will just be more strategic with...