I took my mother and a friend to The Railroad Café in old town Humble, TX for my mother’s birthday. It was an incredible disappointment.
I made a reservation for three at 7:30 PM for a Friday night. We arrived promptly at 7:30. No one was in the dining room to seat us. Only one other couple was there. They were outside smoking. I saw my name on a card on a table so we sat ourselves. We received dry dense bread white bread, pre-sliced, room temperature. We received three or four small marble size balls of butter. We ordered a bowl of olive oil, garlic and red peppers for dipped the bread in. All you could taste was the olive oil. Since the bread was so dry and dense, it sucked up the olive oil making the bread way too oily.
We received the gnocchi soup. They other two people at my table wanted to share it so they split the soup among two bowls for them. After getting the soup and nothing else for nearly an hour, I asked what was taking so long for the rest of our food. Other customers, who had arrived after us, where already being served their entrées.
They said they serve one course at a time and since we had not finished with the soup they were waiting. Waiting? For what? We have been sitting there for nearly an hour. I was outraged! Why didn’t they ask if we wanted the rest of our food. And since only two of the three people there were having soup didn’t it cross their minds that others at the table might be hungry? The reason they had not finished the soup was because they did not want to fill up on it (it was a thick hearty soup) before the rest of food arrived.
So I asked: “So you haven’t even started on the rest of our order yet?” They said they had. “So you been holding the rest of our food there all this time?” Well umm, let me go check. I told the others at the table if the food was not out in five minutes we were leaving. In four minutes they brought out the $18 plate of ravioli, the $12 spinach and shredded Parmesan cheese appetizer, and the $16 meatballs and Lingui pasta.
About one quarter of the ravioli was not covered in the sauce. This means it was cooling much quicker and the ravioli dough was sticking to the other uncovered pasta making it harder to work with.
1) The food prices are staggeringly high. I had a plate of ravioli and sauce for $18. We are talking just a regular amount of ravioli that you would serve at home. Its quality was fine, but it was not $18 worth.
2) We had a bowl of gnocchi soup from the appetizer menu that was $9 for a bowl.
3) We had a tiny bowl of olive oil, garlic, and two red peppers for $3.
4) We had an appetizer that was spinach and shredded Parmesan cheese mixed together and rolled into balls. It was around $12.
5) We had a plate of two baseball size meatballs and Lingui pasta with marina sauce for $16.
6) One glass of lemonade and one ice tea @ $2 each. No refills were offered.
Most entrées ran $18 to $26. While the food was good, it was no where near worth the extreme prices.
They played an Italian opera music way to loud. Every few minutes the soprano or tenor in the opera would hit a high note and its piercing sound would cut though the tiny restaurant.
The lighting was so dim, it was quite hard to read the menu. Each entrée had a name that you could see, but it was in Italian (it is an Italian restaurant). The English description was written in really small fine, cursive print. It was so bad we finally had to ask for a flashlight. They brought a flashlight. It was dirty so they had to wrap it in a paper towel before we could use it.
The restaurant holds about people 25 max. To get to the restroom, you must walk out the entrance and across a small patio.
The chairs where rather small; the seats are about the size of a dinner plate. They had only a token amount of cushioning. The chair backs where made of bent wood. This means the chair backs offered no real back support since non of they wood was flat and since it was only made of a couple of pieces. After waiting for our food so long, he chairs were absolutely unbearably uncomfortable to sit on any longer.
After dinner they tried to get us to have dessert, which were something like $6 to $15. We said no and got out of there. We asked for the meatballs and Lingui and the gnocchi soup to made to go. After paying for the check we had to ask for the to go food. They had forgotten it in the kitchen.
By the time we got out of there, it was around 9:10 PM.
105 N Railroad Ave
Humble, TX, 77338-4554
(281) 319-6244
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