October 6, 2009

Even freebies can lack value

Red Rock actually sent us a monthly mailer. They must have finally straightened out our account. It’s only taken two years – we stop by the rewards club regularly and each time they’d lose the information we gave them before. It'd be great if they finally got it right. Anyway, inside this mailer was a 2-for-1 coupon to the buffet. We’ve tried it before and were less than impressed, but we decided to give it another shot. After all, it’d be a cheap dinner and it meant I didn’t have to cook.

We waited about 20 minutes on a Wednesday night just to get to the cashier. She asked if we wanted to use comp points to cover our tab. Sure! Free meal, score!

After a 10 minute wait for a table we were finally seated. Off to the buffet we went. I sampled a variety of dishes: spring roll, broccoli beef, pad Thai, chicken wings, fajita, and sushi. The fajita was the tastiest, but the tortilla was dry. The next plate I tried ravioli, Stromboli, garlic bread, Caesar salad, provolone cheese. The cheese was the highlight. I covered the entire buffet with the exception of desserts and I only had consumed a few bites. It was sad. I hit the dessert selection to see if there were yummy treats to fill up on. I had a scoop of cappuccino and butter pecan gelato. The former was awful. I ate all of the butter pecan at least that was good. The only other dessert offering I found decent was the shot glasses filled with tiramisu. Although, it seemed more like pudding. I made another loop around the buffet and ended up with a sweet potato, fruit, and cottage cheese. The sweet potato was good. I wished I had found that earlier. Frank didn’t find much he liked either, but he created his own salad concoction in order to fill him up. I snacked enough to not leave hungry, but I was not full by any means.

Service was good. Our plates were cleared, refills were made timely.

Frank asked if I wanted to return, assuming we’d have a similar offer again. My reply? No. He said not even for free, huh? He didn’t think it was that bad. And it wasn’t I’ve had worse – Orleans and Southpoint – but it’s not worth the wait.

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