The decor is great. I started with a warm Amber Light...I stress the ""warm"". I told the waitress the beer was warm and she in essence, said ""So?"" and did nothing about it and charged me for it. I can get over a warm beer, but then I asked for ice tea. A bottle of the extremely weak tea was delivered to the table...could hardly tell it from water. I drank my tap water as it tasted better. I quickly got over the terrible tea expereince.\r
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I split an order of crab cakes as the appetizer, and they were standard Trader Joe issue. Heavy crust, very fishy (not a good sign of freshness), but the sauce was not bad. Would not order them again. The soup was a Jambalya SOUP. And ""soup"" it was. It tasted like a meek Jamblya with half a quart of water added to it to ""water it down"" to make a soup. . Pretty bad! The person I was with orderd the cat fish which came so thickly crusted that she had to use her strenght to cut the crust OFF in order to get to any fish. By now, I was going with ""safety"" and I had the Tennessee Meatloaf and it was very good. My friend ordered a bread pudding for desert and it was so over-cooked that we COULD NOT BREAK IT OPEN! It was hard as a rock and if you threw it at someone you could knock them out. Finally with some grace, they took this rock off the bill.\r
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I had heard good reviews about this place, and I had many great weekend breakfasts at the Ramos House in San Juan Capistrano, which was operated by the people who operate Iva Lee's. So I thought this should be a terrific dining experience.
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