Martinis — Restaurant in Valparaiso

I've reviewed several places, and this was a "must" try. Well, I don't want to be negative, but I will tell you how the "Scratch Kitchen and Lounge" faired. I took my wife and adult girls out for dinner. Excited, the food looked good on the way in so we were all in. The menu has about 1000 things on it, which should have been a sign. A true Scratch Kitchen may have 15-20 things, with about 5-7 signatures. So we started with the Calamari Fritti (fried calamari). It was soggy, over-cooked, and not crispy at all (totally out of the box frozen). The marinara sauce was tasty, but not enough to drown the nastiness of the poorly cooked appetizer. We also thought the Stuffed Mushrooms would be a hit, and honestly, they weren't terrible, but they were dry and void of taste. I guess the mushrooms hid some of the mistakes. We did decide to order a bowl of the Lemon Rice soup, after all, who doesn't like a good Lemon Rice soup? Mistake. NO, none, nada, taste. No lemon flavor, just like a watered down canned soup, only worse. One daughter ordered the Blackened Chicken sandwich. Ok, but "meh" at best. The best part was her completely under cooked fries. Like a raw potato served in grease. The absolutely nastiest thing I ever tasted! My wife had the Chicken Foccaccia sandwich, which was also "meh" and the bun looked disgusting, smashed, flat and old. She had the same terrible fries. The other daughter ordered the Baked Zita. How can you wreck a pasta dish? Well Martinis did. I took a bite and not only did it have no flavor, but I've had better sauces from a can. It tasted like old cheese and soap. I ordered the Lake Perch. The fish wasn't actually bad, but the rice pilaf was disgusting and tasted like some cheap Dollar General off-brand rice. I would surmise that nothing here is actually from scratch, but scratched out of some bargain supply house. The highlight was watching the poor waitress at the other table serve Flaming Souvlaki and about burn her eyebrows off and the manager played it down and made a joke about it. I felt bad for her. So overall, the wait staff was good, not great, but good. The food was bad at ($102.00) and it was also bad if it was free. I'm sure the beer was good, but I had Iced Tea and that was actually the best part of the meal. I had high hopes, but the best thing to happen to this place aside from the facelift, would be that Gordon Ramsay shows up and teaches them what "Scratch" really is. So disappointed, we really wanted it to be good. Suggestion, go somewhere...

Our waitress was very professional. In this review I would have given more stars. But, our encounter with what I assume to be the manager/head of the front of the house (short dark haired fellow with no name tag) fell short.

The drink menu was diverse and our appetizer and entrees delivered. We ordered cobbler and ice cream for dessert. Cobbler is supposed to be fruit filling with a thick crust or biscuit topping. Our dessert was saturated by the fruit mixture and undercooked. All parts of the topping could be spread by my spoon. There was no trace of what should have been a golden crust that makes a cobbler a cobbler. Not to mention the mushy texture and undercooked flour that coats ones tongue deeming our dessert very unpleasant.

The manager/host came to our table to ask how the dessert was and I was honest and entailed my issues above. To which he replied,

"Really? I just had it yesterday."

I said,

"I'm not going to lie to you."

Then I pointed with my spoon to the bowl of peach pineapple porridge. I asked if we could exchange for another dessert, eating this is unpleasant. He grimaced, broke eye contact, looked towards the bar, shrugged with his hands like, 'what do you want me to do about it'.. then walked away as if the bowl of soup in front of me wasn't even there.

When our waitress returned and asked how the dessert is. I said I have to be honest the topping is raw, and a cobbler should be fruit and a golden crust. She apologized for the bowl of mush in front of us and she asked the manager/host to remove the dessert we did not want, but was met with the same denial from her superior.

We extended high thanks to our considerate waitress and moved on with...

I went there last Friday and I have never in my life been treated the way I was treated there! I felt humiliated, embarrassed and uncomfortable! My girlfriends' husband went to sign in so that we can get a table and the way the Host, Barney, spoke to him, he just wanted to leave. Well, us girls wanted to stay so I went to go talk to the host so we can be seated. The person at the counter told me that the Host will be right with me. I have never felt so much anger!! He ignored me and took two other families in front of me until I approached Barney and said, excuse me but I am waiting to be seated and I was here before the people you are about to seat. His reply was I thought you were waiting for pickup. I told him, shouldn't you have asked me if you could help me and then I could have told you that I wanted to be seated. He said I will be right with you and walked away. He finally came back and I told me that it would be a 2 hour wait and that by then they won't be serving cause the will be closing soon (we got there at 7:00pm and now it was 7:30 pm). I told him...Really? I truly felt like he was prejudice because we were Latin. We exchanged a few words and I told him I wanted to talk to the owner. Well, now I'm so upset, tears are coming down my face and my husband stepped in. We finally got seated but way in the back on the other side of the restaurant. The waitress was very nice and the food was good but the atmosphere, treatment and attitude that we endured was horrible. Just because he treated us this way, I was not...