Virginia's on King

Virginia’s on King is a restaurant that we’ve walked by many times and always said, “We should try that place.” Today was the day we did. The restaurant is quaint and comfortable and the service was good, but that’s where the pleasantries end.

In a town where there are SO many great restaurants this ranks up there for me as one of the worst. Sorry, but I’m being honest about my experience.

We were famished and decided to start with the fried pickles. Although they were tart slices of well seasoned pickles they were undercooked and the batter fell off of them when you attempted to eat them. Not such a bad thing since the batter had zero flavor.

Next we were served complimentary broccoli corn bread. It seemed to be stale and was very dry. Can lunch be any better, we thought?

My Grilled Pear and Frisee salad was terrible. The shrimp (a $4.99 up charge), were under cooked and loaded with soot from the grill. The salad itself was incredibly overdressed in a flavorless dressing. Add to this the mushy, stale spiced walnuts and we were about to call it a day.

I asked for my shrimp to be placed back on the grill for a few minutes since they were so under cooked. We also asked for some sweet potato fries that were hot, since ours were ice cold when they arrived with my husband’s sandwich. When a restaurant has seven tables seated for lunch, how does this happen?

My husband’s Philly Cheese steak daily-special lacked flavor and the “strip steak” was incredibly tough. The blue cheese coleslaw must have been stored near the grill as it tasted smoky and quite frankly we thought it was past its shelf life.

So with all of these elements to our $43.00 lunch if you get the urge to walk into Virginia’s on King as Dionne Warwick once sang, “Walk on by.”