One thinks that the Old Tom’s Sports Bar may not even be in business if it did not have a captive supply of customers from the Airport Ramada, as was the case with my mother and I last night when we had a very late dinner after checking in to the hotel from our day of flying. This bar at least has the raw materials, some of them, for a good sports bar but cannot seem to get some of the important details right, and so our dining experience was not nearly as good as it has been at other points during this trip. Now, I have eaten in more than my fair share of sports bars, doing reading and writing while watching games on television, and generally speaking I have had pleasant experiences, especially as a regular, although that was not the case here. Instead, until the restaurant is able to deal with its serious service difficulties, I cannot at all recommend this as a place to eat. You may as well go to the IHOP or the McDonald’s nearby rather than go to this place, as at least you won’t get charged an 18% service charge while the waitress asks for a tip on top of that that is not at all deserved.

Concerning our dining experience, it was obviously not a good one. It took a long time for us to be able to order and the server seemed not particularly aware of the menu, such as the ingredients of the daily soup or what sides were in stock–nor did we get utensils until we asked for them after I had gotten to food, from a surly waitress. I got my food in a relatively timely fashion after I had ordered it, and it tasted pretty good. My mother ended up getting some boiled vegetables (advertised as steamed vegetables) that were bland and not at all tasty and rubbery and she was pretty set off by the combination of poor cooking and poor service. That was in addition to the missing cole slaw that she wanted that ended up being out of stock that we were not told about. On top of that the waitress did not even ask us how we had enjoyed the meal–perhaps from our unfriendly body language she could tell the news was not good. And it was not.