Our house

Our house is the name of a coffee shop and cafe in Columbia, Illinois.  I'm trying to think about it, but best I can come up with is that it is the ONLY coffee shop and cafe that is open, every day, in Columbia.  I know that there is another one, but it has erratic hours.  This one, is great as when we stopped in around 8am, they were kind, courteous, and friendly.  As well as good food and good prices.

 This is the outside of the cafe and while the main door, on the left, doesn't look like much or looks like it would lead you into a nice spot for a bite, then you are wrong.

The inside looks like it is filled with things.  While it may look cluttered, these items are all useful so it has everything you want.  Do you want a full breakfast to go?  They have it.  Do you want some coffee and to sit around and lounge and relax and forget your cup? They have that too.  Are you trying to stave off extra calories and would like some sugar free syrups in your coffee?  Well, they have more than 10 of those.  I know that the other coffee house in Columbia didn't have any, last time we checked. (Which was a while ago because I forgot when they were last open.)

What is the food like?  Well, when we went in, there was a single woman watching the front and cooking the food.  I ordered my usual breakfast tester: biscuits and gravy.  This is what I got:

 
This is a to-go order as well.  I am sure it was under $5.  But this was two homemade biscuits, split in half with what seemed a gallon of rich, homemade sausage gravy on top.  It was better tasting than McDonald's and IHOP combined!  5 out of 5 stars.

My wife got the spinach quiche and this is what it looked like.

My wife thought that it tasted good and it was a 4 out of 5.

My son, who will eat almost anything with eggs in it for breakfast, ordered the egg breakfast and got this:

Yeah, that looked like 2 eggs, 2 toast, some butter, jam and some fruit.  My son ate the eggs, but not the toast.  Not that there was anything wrong with the toast, other than it was toast and he is 3 years old.

Anyway, I suggest you to stop into Our House, the next time you are in Columbia.  It is very relaxing inside and while it may not have that "new" trendy style like a St. Louis Bread Co., Starbucks, or other coffee shops may have, it definitely meets its goals.

18 restaurants and this is all we can come up with???

Welcome to Columbia, Illinois.  This small town of just about 10,000 people is located South East of St. Louis, at almost a short 15 minute drive from South St. Louis County or about 20 minutes from Downtown.  In terms of restaurants, there is about 18 restaurants in this area feeding about 10,000 people.  This means that if a restaurant does well, if all of them do well, they could each possible get as much as 555 people; (10,000 divided by 18).  That is a good possibility.  When people here want something to eat, they either stay at home and cook, stay around town, or go to one of the other places nearby, like Waterloo or St. Louis.

A new restaurant has opened in town, or had opened a few months ago and while I like to get there and check out the new places as soon as I can, this one has proven to be difficult.  The restaurant is only open on Tuesday through Saturday and there is seating for about 30 people and no more, inside.  This includes the 2 three person tables near the bar.  So, there isn't a lot of room inside for a restaurant.  This restaurant, serves Cajun food and a lot of people in town have been waiting anxiously for it.

Well, right to the food.  Who Dat's is this Cajun style restaurant and I called in an order on a work day, went up and picked it up about 10 minutes later.  I ordered just two things.  I ordered the Cajun sampler and the pulled BBQ pork sandwich.  Now, the Cajun sampler was "A generous portion of jambalaya, red beans and rice and bbq shrimp...$13"  This is what we received:

  This picture is almost actual size.  This was the first part of this $13 sampler.  We have about 2 cups of Jambalaya, a skimpy piece of French bread with a large hole in it and a tiny piece of corn bread.  The Jambalaya was okay, it was spicy and tasted like the same Jambalaya that you can get anywhere else.  The French bread was useless and that tiny piece of dried out cornbread muffin was quite pointless. This got just a 2 out of 5 from me.
It also came with some red beans and rice and the generous portion of bbq shrimp.

Red beans and rice:

We have about 8 ounces of red beans and rice.  There is a mix of red beans and sausage and chives on top of about a third of a cup of white rice.  They didn't seem as if they were cooked together, which one may expect or even do when making this at home, as the rice had absolutely NO flavor and the beans tasted like spice.  There was no taste of beans, chives or anything else, just spicy-ness.  I give this a poor 1 out of 5.

The bbq shrimp was available for my wife, who loves shrimp.  This generous portion of bbq shrimp was nothing more than 3 over cooked shrimp.  They were past the rubber stage and almost at a crispy stage.  She said it was okay after peeling them and playing with how they were almost gummy and crunchy at the same time.  Most likely, they were precooked and frozen so all they had to do was warm them up again, but they actually overcooked them for us.  A 1 out of 5 is what they received.  As far as this sampler is concerned, we didn't finish the red beans and rice because both of us thought it was bad.

Now, the pulled pork sandwich was next and this $7 dish contained "dried rubbed and slow cooked for 10 hours served on a fresh bun with chips".

This is what it looked like.  That $7 paid for about 5 pieces of hard, tough, inedible pork smothered in BBQ sauce and slapped on a bun.  There is about a small bag's worth of chips in here as well.  My guess is that they bought these chips somewhere and then just grabbed a handful to stick in here.  The dish was okay, like a 2 out of 5.

Now, how could everything have been better?  Well, first thing that got my attention was portion size for the price.  $13 for enough food for one person to eat and still be hungry or maybe fill one person, is a bit much.  The $7 sandwich, was worth about $5 tops.  I would pay about $8 for the Cajun sampler.  $8.99 can get you a huge amount of food at places like Chevy's and here you get half of the amount of food for the same price.

My conclusion:  As much as I don't want to admit it, this is the second new restaurant in town that has bad food.  I mean, there are other places in town that have great food, so why can't they do this?  Are they that full of themselves?  Both this place and the other bad restaurant in town have both owners that come from 'restaurant families'.  I've said it before, but experiences do not go through the genes.  You cannot be good at driving a truck because your father or mom did.  So, to all of those restaurant owners who claim that they will be successful because your father or mother ran a restaurant, guess what, it doesn't work that way!

What did you miss this past Friday?

This Friday was the first time that there was a food and wine festival/fair at The Market Place in Columbia.  It started as an idea of one of the employees, Kathy, and turned into a great walk, through the store.

It all started with a sample of some chocolate covered strawberries and some wine sampling.

 

Then there was a large buffet set out of snacks and desserts.  They had baklava, mini chocolate eclairs, cheese and crackers, along with toasted ravioli and some savory things as well.

This table has some frozen smoothie mix.  It had no added sugars or even HFCS and the gentleman was giving out these little sample glasses.  I tasted the strawberry smoothie and was great.  They come frozen and can last for several weeks upon opened.  You just add ice and they are ready.  

 

They had some poppyseed dressing and a nice salad for sampling.

Would you like some crab ragoon or toasted ravioli?  It is interesting to note that all of these items are sold at this Market Place store, so everything you can try, you can buy anytime.

Fruit flavored vodkas and chocolate flavored wine.  Let me tell you though, for me, a chocoholic, that chocolate wine tastes like a badly flavored Bailey's Irish Cream.  The chocolate flavor is only slightly there.  If you want the same thing, buy some generic vodka and add 1 tablespoon of chocolate milk.  The chocolate flavor is not rich or even very lasting.

 

Here we have some cookies and some yogurt.  I think the reps were from General Mills and they were happy to give my kids yogurt and even happier when they liked it.

The last table we passed had some sweet beers and wines and overall was delicious.  The things offered at this table could beat the chocovine, out of the water in an instant.

I think the best thing of the night was the chocolate covered strawberries and those pre-frozen smoothies.  The wines were good, cookies were good and the food from the deli, showing off their buffet, was good as well.  It was a highly enjoyable evening and it looked to be a successful one.  I hope there are many more in the future.

How not to run a restaurant, part 2...

Just like the original restaurant, that is not to be named, my family and some co-workers decided to check out the new restaurant in town and see how it is.  Located on Main Street, in Columbia Illinois, this new place wants to be known for their wine and delicious food.  We had a problem with what we experienced.

So, there are nine of us and we were looking to try the place out, ordering appetizers, kids' meals and foods for everyone.  The first thing that was tough was that we waited 5 minutes for them to clean off a table, which was right in front of us and just needed to be wiped off and a single cup had to be thrown away.  That was it and that took 5 minutes!

Secondly, after we were sat, it took about 15 minutes for a waitress to come to us and get our drink order.  After that we ordered food. 

Now, we have an hour for lunch at work, and we waited and waited and an hour later, we still had no food at our table!  Well, we had the appetizer which was a bad spinach dip and a bowl of Kraft mac and cheese and that was it.  One hour after coming in and more than 40 minutes later, no food for anyone else.  And I will point out that we went at about 12:30pm and there were no more than 15 people in there eating as well!  So, no one can tell me that they were too busy to get food to us.

It is now 1:54pm, my wife just brought in our food, as I had to leave after an hour of waiting and get back to work with my kids.  My wife told me that as soon as they brought the food out, she asked them to wrap it all up, and they complained saying that the food was only put in 20 minutes ago!  That is not a true statement as where was the order while we sat there for 40 minutes after we told the server. Not once did we receive an apologize or anything as they acted like it was our fault.  I am eating as I write and guess what?  Its not that good.  The steak and straw sandwich and chips is cold, fatty, flavorless and the chips have no taste to them at all, and one was even raw. The onion straws are soggy. The sandwich, as I did finally get it, 45 minutes later, is not good. 

So, restaurant, I don't want to tell people to not go there, as the Union is already doing that for me.  But step it up a notch.  At your current rate, your restaurant will likely be open no longer than a few months. I for one will not tell anyone to go there, nor will any of the other 7 adults whom went with me.