This week, I suggested the Hume Hotel, which has a salad bar I was interested in. My appetite being what it is these days, I needed the flexibility the salad bar had to offer. That, and I really wanted some soup. The salad bar comes with soup of the day, which that day happened to be white bean & chorizo. Not my bag, so I subbed in the French Onion Soup.
Now, if you read this post, you'll see that the Hume has a history, and part of that history for me, involves a spectacular French Onion Soup I had there when I was a kid that had beer in it. To this day, it is the yard stick against which I measure all other French Onion Soups! In fact, my dad is the same - he still rhapsodizes about that soup. I knew, however, from our last lunch there that the recipe had changed and the beery soup was no longer on offer, but the current soup is supposedly made with sherry, as specified in the menu's description.
After having a sampler from the salad bar, my soup finally came. And...
...Well, it was good, but not that good. A bit weak, and not tasting too much of the sherry. It also didn't have very many onions in it. Also - they hadn't taken the bay leaves out and had used small bay leaves, so twice I took a spoonful and chomped down on bay leaves. I was a little annoyed.
My dad had ordered the lasagne, which came with garlic toast and a surprise Caesar salad. The salad was a surprise because the night shift had just come on and they put salad with their dinner entrees, so Dad got lucky.
He said the lasagne was really good and enjoyed it very much.The shift change might explain the slowness of the service. Because it was S-L-O-W.
Dad was full, but I wanted dessert, and I knew that the Hume has a great dessert list. I opted for the lemon meringue pie and was not disappointed at all - except, once again, it took forever to come out. But it was delicious and I realized I hadn't had lemon meringue pie in ages. Yum!
So, while the food was good, the service was iffy. Perhaps they were having an off day. It happens.
