Restaurant Reviews
 

I've been reading reviews about all the restaurants in and around TV for a while and noticed that often each thread contains positive and negative reviews. One poster says it was terrible, followed by another saying it is their favorite place. While some of this certainly may be due to differing tastes and experiences prior to moving here, I wonder if some may be due to different times of dining. Is the service and food quality different for dinner than for lunch, or vice versa? Could the restaurant that offends at lunch do a better job with dinner? Is the staff in the kitchen different at lunch than dinner? Could this be the reason for the differing experiences?

Perhaps we need to be very clear when we review in specifying when we dined, as well as our experience. This may shed light on which places do a good job with one seating, although not as well with another.

We were discussing this issue today. It is true that many restaurants get very mixed reviews from great to horrid, from various diners. We are staying very close to Havana, and have not gone there due to the preponderance of mediocre to bad reviews we have read on TOTV. We will go judge for ourselves one day soon, and hope that we have the positive experience some others have reported. We always rely on the gourmet club for their collective expertise, and have found them to be pretty reliable, although we disagreed with their 14 1/2 rating for city fire (we didn't think it was up to that level). The Villages Gourmet Club Restaurant Review Site

I always judge a restaurant by the number of cars or a line waiting to get in. Nothing guarantees a great experience but it is a start.

This time of year you have to stand in line at Havana. So, what does that tell you?

They have a very slow hostess? :loco:

Skip

After spending 9 days in TV to spec our house out, we ate dinner out all 9 nights. I think what surprised me the most is the amount of fast food restaurants. Most of the food is fried. Fried food is bad for you. We did see grilled chicken and a little broiled fish but they were just so so. We tried RJ gators ( I think that's the name) Sonny's BBQ, Bravo Pizza, Red Sauce and Too Jays. In my opinion, Red Sauce was the best even though it was pasta at least it wasn't fried. We did go to Lopez which was not fast foody and it was really good. Maybe we need to try more places. I won't be eating out much with all this deep fried food on the menu. It does seem popular with people though. Just not for me. I'm not bashing these places cause the lines were out the door, so they must e doing something right. Just making an observation.

You gotta stay current - the very latest is that fried food isn't bad to you!

Check out Sweet Tomatoes - no fried salad, soup or muffins!


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Normally a good plan. The Villages from December to April is however the exception to that rule of thumb.

Went to Mallory last night and had our first bad experience in two years. Server was nice but overwhelmed with patrons. Busboy was dropping "f" bombs and was apparently very upset because he was asked to stay late, slamming chairs throwing plates and letting everyone know he wasn't happy. It was very awkward. Food took forever to get and when we finally did get my wife's fish & vegetables were so bad she couldn't eat it and had to send it back. Management apologized and tried to make right, but it had gotten quite late and my wife didn't want to wait another hour for them to bring something else out. They didn't charge us for her meal. The rest of our meals were good, meatloaf kinda dry and tough. It was Mardi Gras night and we figured it might be crowded and I can forgive & forget all because of better service and food in the past. I hope the busboy gets some anger management counseling.DG

P.S. Had dinner at Cane GCC the other night and had very good service and food despite the new limited menu and their recent tragedy. Kind of puts things in perspective when you complain about your dining experience, never know for sure what's going on that particular night in the lives of your wait staff and cooks. I try to be empathetic in most situations. DG

We've had very good luck at Havana arriving on a Friday night around 4pm and ordering either the prime rib or the fried haddock dinner. We've gone with as many as 14 people and never a problem. I agree, that it depends on which cook is in the kitchen and how overwhelmed with crowds the staff is. We have run into the lunchtime crew who chats in the corner and pretends you're not there to be seated. We don't go there at that time anymore.

Havana CC Restaurant
 

Went to Havana last night with guests. The food was very good and the service provided by Corey was excellent. He gave us his recomendation of several menu items and they were all very good. He was a pleasure to deal with.