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Dining Divas at Newstead Tower Public House
Good Companions, Good Cause, But Restaurant Not So Good
BY LISA KAMPETER
The Dining Diva’s had two choices this past month. Be naughty or be nice at our monthly dinner outing. Our holiday spirit kept being tested this night so the odds of us ending up on Santa’s good list weren’t very good. So why not be naughty.
We moved our normal first Thursday of the month dinner to coincide with the “Dining Out For Life” event this year (the effort for AIDS). We chose Newstead Tower Public House in the Grove Neighborhood because they were donating 35% of the bills to the AIDS event. We were well on our way to the good list.
This new restaurant is in a reviving community known as the Grove Neighborhood, also known as Forest Park Southeast. Only open a couple weeks, Newstead Tower Public House looked like it was the place to be that night but just not for us.
Usually diners are greeted at the door. We stood there and waited. Several minutes later, we were still waiting for someone to just say hello or acknowledge that we had walked in. And they didn’t. I began to wonder if that diet I’ve been talking about going on for the last 10 years was really starting to work. Had I become so thin and invisible to the average eye?
Once seated, we waited and waited again for menus. Then we waited and waited for someone to take our order. And then we waited for our food. Close to an hour. Was St. Nick putting us to the test?
Still in the giving spirit, we gave up our table. A few Divas had to cancel on the outing at the last minute so we didn’t need such a large table. We offered to give up one of the tables that had been pushed into ours. What we hadn’t realized was that we would have to squeeze together with a couple of us sitting at corners of the table. Now I was really starting to believe the 10 year diet was working since our waitress thought we’d all fit in such tight quarters.
Still believing it’s better to give than receive, the Dining Divas kept with tradition and brought unwrapped toys for the Toys for Tots campaign. Chutes and Ladders, Candyland, Dora, and of course, it wouldn’t be 2007 without Hannah Montana. The Nice List was looking nicer.
The Dining Divas also “adopted” a determined college student down on her luck. We brought gift cards of need from grocery stores and Wal-Mart but also gift cards for fun from Target and Bath and Body Works. Giving does feel good, but a grumbling stomach doesn’t.
It was like Christmas morning for Grandma Diva when her dinner salad arrived 50 minutes after she ordered it. Then everyone else’s dinners showed up another 10 minutes later, excluding the Newlywed Diva, who perhaps needed her food more than anyone else’s at the table. The rest of us can afford to skip a few meals. Not a good idea for her.
We were back on the Naughty List when we all started digging in. We asked for steak knives. They didn’t have any. We asked for Diet Coke. We got something that tasted like root beer. We ordered a hamburger with cheese and mushrooms, and it cost about fives times as much as a Fast Eddie burger and didn’t have near the taste. We ordered fish and chips. We got chips and grease. Aside from the meal that came an hour and 20 minutes after we ordered, all of our food was cold.
We’ve gone to bad restaurants before, but we learned a lesson this time. Let a new restaurant become somewhat new before the Dining Divas try it out. But regardless of the restaurant, it was good people getting together for a good cause, and that can’t all be bad. Even with Santa’s tough standards.
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