Fiesta Sizzler: A Restaurant Review

I have decided to become a food critic. Now keep in mind that I have absolutely no experience in this area. I do feel, however, that despite this lack of experience, I have an important duty to perform. My goals with this new role are simple but, I feel, extremely crucial to our palates, our pocketbooks, and most especially, our sanity. I aspire to direct locals and visitors to fabulous restaurants in the areas where we live or visit during our traveling adventures. I will admit that there might be an ulterior motive behind these reviews as well: to shut down those restaurants that I believe should really not open their doors to the public even one more day.

Today’s experience (and trust me I would not deign to call it anything else) takes us to Fiesta Sizzler on Kenway Road in London SW5 – just north of Earl’s Court Station. We walked by, and after glancing in at the laughing people, nice décor, and the reasonable prices listed on the menu posted on the window, we decided to try it out.

We stood inside the door for a minute or so and then a young man asked how many in our party, we replied “two” and then he began to bus a table nearby so that we could sit down. He removed the old dishes and brought 2 forks. Three or four minutes after that, napkins and knives appeared; then he invited us to sit down. Five minutes after being seated he brought us wine glasses.

We sat for at about 10 minutes without menus. Fortunately, though, we were treated to very comical entertainment – every 2 minutes (and you could almost set your watch by it) one of the cooks would appear from the kitchen and have to reset a breaker in the box that was located in the dining area. Once was an accident, twice would have made me reconsider where I had things plugged in, but after 5 times it was, well, hilarious. At least we had something to look at though!

After the “show” we finally received menus. We quickly decided what to order and then closed our menus – a sure sign of our readiness to order, or so we thought. We watched while the man who seated us and a young Asian waitress brought out food and drinks to several other tables without even glancing our way. After waiting for about 10 more minutes, an older Asian woman appeared and asked if we had ordered. We told her that we had not and she apologized and then hurried away. We looked at each other wondering if we would ever see her again. She did reappear in short order with a pen and a pad of paper. We placed our order (very slowly, however, as she was writing down everything we said word for word). Three minutes later Michael received his soda and water. I had also ordered water and a glass of wine, but they never arrived.

We waited for some time (I tried to stop counting the number of times the cook came out to reset the breaker) before our dinner started to arrive. The appetizer we had ordered had not yet come when they brought part of Michael’s dinner – the fajita meat, but none of the sour cream, salsa, etc that was supposed to come on the side. My plate arrived next and Michael asked about the appetizer and the fajita sides. Five minutes later the young man reappeared (without the sour cream or salsa) to let us know that the appetizer would take 4 minutes to cook. We told him to forget it. We had our dinner by then (or at least most of it), so we didn’t need it anyway.

A few minutes later we flag him down again to ask about the fajita sides. He acted as though this was a completely new concept for him. The older Asian woman came to the table to confirm that with the fajitas they serve guacamole, salsa, and sour cream (Michael had made the mistake of asking for cheese and this really seemed to confuse them). Michael told her not to worry about cheese or guacamole, and just bring the salsa and sour cream. She then disappeared into the kitchen. While she was gone the younger Asian woman appeared with our appetizer that we had told the young man not to order. Oh well, not worth worrying about now. We ate it – glad to have it, actually, since I didn’t eat all of my supper.

Now I have time to briefly discuss the food. We have time because it will be an hour (and I’m not exaggerating much) before the check arrives. The brevity will be due to the lack of any real flavor or especially endearing qualities that the food might have had to make up for the dreadfully poor service we had endured. Bland would be an understatement, I think. It was mediocre at best. I will say that it was edible, but nothing more remarkable than that.

One thing we have learned since living in London for a few weeks is that you must always ask for the check, as your wait staff will not bring it until you request it at least once. We flagged down the young man as soon as we saw him (for a while there was no wait staff in the dining room at all). We asked for the check and he nodded and began clearing the dishes from the table. While we waited for the check we listened to the last 30 seconds of “All the Way”, a duet with Celine Dion and some man whose name I can not think of at the moment. There must have been a scratch on the disc because the song would end then skip back to the same spot and play over and over again. After listening to that several times, believe me you’re ready for someone to put you out of your misery.

I saw the older woman again and waved, trying to get her to bring us the check. She looked away and then disappeared into the kitchen. After a few more minutes, the young man appeared with two plates of food and was going to put them at our table. We told him that we didn’t order anything else, but we were waiting for the check. He nodded then disappeared into the kitchen again. The couple next to us was laughing with us – what else could we do? Once the woman finally came out of the kitchen, I stood up and waved at her with both hands. I’m sure I looked funny – most everyone in the restaurant turned to look in my direction – but I didn’t care. I just wanted to get out of there! She finally came to the table and I asked for the check – AGAIN. She ran off then came back with a pen and pad to write down what we had ordered. How did we ever get our food in the first place I wonder? She finally got it figured up – we put some cash on the table and flew out of there as quickly as possible without waiting for our change – we might have been there until breakfast if we tried to wait!

We decided that this place needs to close so that we can get a better restaurant in that space – a Mi Ranchito (our favorite Mexican restaurant in Olathe) might do nicely there. Maybe we should talk to them about franchising! :-)