The Forking Truth is that a Great Menu is Only Great if it’s Executed

Kitchen West Restaurant at The Scottsdale Resort at McCormick Ranch AZ

Kitchen West Restaurant at The Scottsdale Resort at McCormick Ranch AZ

What drew me to Kitchen West is the ambitious menu that is packed with wonderful ingredients and a creative menu that showcases hard to find produce.  I thought that this is where I want to eat. Everything on the menu sounds amazing. The fine resort setting is also a bonus. The grounds are full of lovely desert gardens to stroll threw. Kitchen West just seemed like it was going to be the five star experience I was hoping for.

I notice that this large restaurant is nearly deserted….Is this a……Foreshadow……?

We start out with the two for $15.00 appetizers.

img_5432

We get what’s called Foraged Mushroom  Kiln Flatbread and Fried Mesquite Honey Cheese Curds. We find that the Foraged Mushroom Flatbread is missing mushrooms on top. The manager finds out and delivers us mushrooms and apologies and takes the appetizers off the bill. At this time we asked for the appetizers to be wrapped up so we save room for the entree plates. We later realize that our flatbread is also missing chimchurri sauce and provolone cheese. However the flatbread contained a  spreadable cheese that we weren’t expecting. Honey isn’t noticeable on the cheese curds. Not certain if the yellow mustard is the correct sauce to go with the curds. I was hoping that the bumpy start was over and things would go smooth now.

I  tried the Summer Harvest Salad with added Salmon. My salad looks attractive but looks can be deceiving.

img_5441

img_5443

The fish is very over-cooked. The salmon was suffering albumin formation from the over cooking. It’s like egg whites coming out of the over cooked fish. This fish seems like it was cooked days ago and just got slightly re-heated just for me…… 🙁  It’s almost cold and looks like this….I am just floored by this..salmon is a very easy fish to cook. My only guess is that it’s possible that this was a leftover from a private function or buffet in the popular resort but I don’t know for sure. After the hiccup with appetizers ……….My head is spinning….How can such a nice resort restaurant serve food like this……..?…..I do eat some of the fish because I’m hungry. However the fish is not enjoyable and is just sustenance. What I didn’t eat my husband bagged up for the dogs.

OH FORKING JOY!….

Ok the salmon is a bust and some things were screwed up with the appetizers but now I’m moving on to the amazing sounding salad that I was looking forward to for days…..I dig threw the salad and discover….The hard to come by Fiddlehead Ferns are missing, No one had time to pickle the blueberries or they grabbed the wrong blueberries so I received un-pickled blueberries, my salad is missing the candied sunflower seeds that I might have enjoyed and to top it off.

The dressing seems like nothing more than cucumber water mixed with sour cream. (yuk) I would think that fresh herbs and or seasoning are missing but I don’t know for a fact….Maybe they just serve unappetizing dressing? I don’t know!

OH it doesn’t get any more FORKING JOYFUL than this…..

I’m just in a shut down mode……I just want to leave. ……..Thinking about crying.

Just so you can keep track….

Foraged mushrooms, provolone cheese and chimichurri sauce were missing from topping the flatbread.

Missing ingredients from the salad were fiddlehead ferns, pickled blueberries (had fresh blueberries) and candied sunflower seeds. Dressing sucked and the salmon seemed like it has been prepared by a monkey from the zoo days ago.

At this point nobody actually asked me how my salad was..The waitress did walk by and tells me I got quality Alaskan Salmon from a fisherman the chef knows. I just listen and am thinking to myself this is the same as putting lipstick on a pig.

img_5609

This is the same as giving a chimpanzee a paint brush.

img_5610

This is the same as trying to fry water.

img_5611

Blah blah BLAH it just doesn’t matter.

My husband’s meal is actually OK.

img_5440

He got the Pelini Pasta stuffed with sausage. The pasta was made nicely, sausage inside could have used some seasoning. The plate might have been missing garlic chives. Probably was missing garlic chives.

The manager cleared the plates and said, “You got a really great salad didn’t you?”

Now I’m still in shut down mode…I didn’t want to point out all the missing ingredients in my salad and tell her how tasteless the dressing was but I did mention the salmon was really dry. She generously already have taken the appetizers off the bill and I couldn’t expect that she’d do anything further. At this time I actually felt sorry for her. It must be horrible to try to fix up spoiled dinning experiences all day long.

My review is based on only one dining experience.

I don’t know if my experience is typical of this restaurant or not typical. I also don’t know what kind of people work here…….?

Inexperienced untrained that don’t know or experienced that don’t care…

Sorry can’t recommend  Kitchen West based on my one and only experience.

NOT WORTH A FORK!

NOT WORTH A FORK!

It’s not my intention to write a negative review. I note your experience my differ for the better and I hope it does. …….Remember the pasta dish was ok.

A great well written menu is only great if it’s actually executed. To me a menu is also a contract. If I read I’m getting things that I don’t get I feel the contract with me is broken.  If someone told me that they were out of a few things I would expect things to be missing and not be expecting the missing items. I also wonder how many missing items am I to forgive when dining out? But in the end the poor execution of the salmon was a very fatal error.

I just tell The Forking Truth.

My experience at Kitchen West was Not Worth A Fork and I do note I hope your experience differs.

The Forking Truth is that a Great Menu is only Great if it’s Executed.

www.TheScottsdaleResort.com

I also note that I purposely didn’t use Kitchen West in subject of my review to purposely not bring negative attention public.

 The Forking Truth

The Forking Truth

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.