Thursday, September 8, 2016

Enricos of Young Harris Ga, Review

Honest Review: Enricos of Young Harris.

I’ve heard all kinds of mixed reviews on Enricos of Young Harris. I’ve read some reviews online and although many are good, many are subpar as well. So I decided one night to take my wife out for dinner. We chose Enricos after running around to several other places, only to find those other restaurants closed, as it was labor day.

Firstly, inside. The place looks the part. Spread out dinning, nice tables, good atmosphere. We felt somewhat underdressed, but comfortable. A semi typical sort of relaxed Italian Charm, that I enjoyed, but, apparently looks can be deceiving.

The service was strange. We had 3 servers visit our table. One to take a drink order, which was served in red plastic drink cups, which did not match the appeal of the place’s appearance. As attractive as the place lends itself to be, big red plastic cups don’t add up, but I took it in stride.

After a long while, we were greeted by a second server who seemed a bit confused and out of sorts. He was nice enough, but after asking us if we were ready to order, he vanished and was replaced by a third server, who was new and never waitressed before. That’s cool….

We ordered 9$ glasses of wine, which came to us in water spotted glasses. Mine had a few greasy finger prints on the outside and the inside. Ok… I looked past that…I was expecting finer dinning, as they call themselves fine dinning….but not so much thus far.

We were served a basket of bread and a olive oil and onion sort of bruschetta spread, which was pretty good. We enjoyed the bread and dipping oil. But still hadn’t ordered food as we were trying to take our time.

Upon ordering, my wife ordered Lobster ravioli, and requested that she have a salad first. I ordered a 27$ dish called Seafood Enrico. Shrimp, scallops, fish and muscles. The sauce to be applied was a sherry wine sauce, which I firmly requested to not be used. I asked for instead, that the sauce be a red sauce, preferably marinara. I was told that would not be a problem. I ordered a dinner side salad as well. Which was an extra $2.95… for 27$....a dinner salad should come with it….but hey…ok…lol

The salads were small. A pointless single wedge of tomato, topped a mixed bag of greens and drenched in some sort of reddish raspberry cream house dressing. Apparently we didn’t get a choice. Salads were subpar, small, and lacked two things. Choice of dressing, and things most people might expect in a salad. Onions, tomatoes, cucumber, olives, something besides just mixed greens.

At this point we had finished our wine, at which, until we left, our glasses sat untouched. No request if we’d like them refilled, nor were we asked if we wanted more at the moment when we were finally served. Instead, our empty dirty glasses were ignored and left empty.  

Now the food.

My 27$ dish was drenched in sherry sauce. Nicely done, if I ordered it that way. I sent it back. To only have it returned with the sherry sauce still on the food, tossed in marinara. So instead of recooking the dish, the “Chef” saved the day by rinsing the pasta, and the seafood, in the sink, without actually making sure everything was rinsed well enough. The dish was gross. Flavor was gross. The pasta was cold, the muscles were still sherry sauced. Just horrible.

My wife’s ravioli….semi frozen on the inside. Obviously, it came out of a box.
So we paid for our dinner and left with zero intentions to return.
Subpar service, subpar food, and way too expensive to be taken out of a box and be undercooked.

Pretending to cook real Italian food should be a crime, and so far, Enrico’s should be locked up…lol

A Chef is only as good as his last ticket, and we were certainly close to being the last for the night. No time was taken to recook my dish. The ravioli was cold. The overall experience was just poor. 1.5 stars out of 5 at most and that’s being generous.

Would I recommend Enricos? Hell no. Only if you want to pay high dollar prices for frozen food out of a box.

The Chef needs to bring his game up to the standards that the place appears to be. A few extra minutes of cooking and not rinsing would have saved the day, partially…and a trained wait staff, capable of attention to detail and service, would have helped….but this is what you get when someone focuses on trying to make as much money as they can and not focusing on making memories for their guests. Which is purely the most important aspect of knowing this business.

People take only one thing with them when they leave your restaurant, and it’s not a doggy bag…it’s the memory of the experience. Make that memory a poor one, and thus, this is the result.

1.5 Stars. Plenty of room for improvement…. Lackluster and sadly, way, way over priced. Piss poor bagged food, frozen not fresh and a poorly done job on precooked linguini…lol…. Enricos of Young Harris is worth skipping if your looking for a fine dinning experience, with real Italian food.

Will not return.

Thanks for reading.
Chef Jeffrey Allen Kaufman.

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