This place was absolutely horrible.

I wasn't expecting fine dining or anything, from a place that allows you to write in crayon on their walls. However, I did expect the food to be edible. Apparently this is to difficult for East Side Mario's to achieve.

When we arrived, we stood at the door for ten minutes waiting for someone to notice us. When we finally flagged someone to get the hostess, who had passed us several times already, she arrived looking surprised and asked, "Oh, did you want to be seated?".

We sat down to dirty plates, and had to get our own menus. The waiter finally arrived, and we ordered drinks, waiting a long time to receive them. The coffee came without cream or sugar, and he forgot to bring it, so we had to ask twice. When we ordered, he was unable to answer any questions about the food and seemed confused about the options available with the entrees.

I started with caesar salad. The dressing was obviously Kraft and the croutons came out of a box.
I ordered the chicken parmesan, which is one of my all-time favourite dishes, and which I make at home quite often. It's very easy to make. The chicken was rubbery and the sauce was awful. It had a horrible bile-like flavour. The spagetti al olio that came with it was slightly overcooked. My dining partner had a steak, which was alright, but the vegetables were barely cooked.

I was still hungry, and I ordered the raspberry cheesecake for desert, thinking that it's hard to screw up a cheesecake. Well, they managed. It was utterly flavour-less. The texture was odd, and it seemed to be more filler and less cream cheese. The coulis wasn't good enough to save the cake form itself.

I'm accustomed to poor service at places like this because of the labour shortage, but you'd think that a huge chain like this would have some kind of quality control on their food. I've never had a worse experience dining, and would rather have eaten at McDonalds (which I hate with a passion, by the way).

All around awful, and I will never go back.