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DINING OUT: Taste has checked out of hotel

BY PETE TITTL, Contributing columnist
ptittl@bakersfield.com | Tuesday, Aug 02 2011 06:09 PM

Last Updated Tuesday, Aug 02 2011 06:11 PM

Some of you may remember what a big splash the Red Lion made when it opened its hotel and restaurant complex on Rosedale Highway back in the '80s. The chain made a particular point of offering restaurants good enough to compete with the best in town. It was a corporate philosophy, and sure enough, both the formal dining room and the coffee shop were quite amazing. In those days, the formal dining room could compete with the big boys in town: Patrick's, The Blue Note and The Bistro, as ¡well as Lemucchi's Tam O'Shanter. The coffee shop, using the same kitchen, was an exceptional value. The Sunday brunch at one time was the best in town.

Along the way, Red Lion sold the property to DoubleTree and those high-minded goals slipped away. Things changed. The formal dining room became part of Club Odyssey, and the coffee shop became something mostly to satisfy hotel guests. I actually haven't written about either in years, so I thought I'd check them out.

It was late on a Sunday and the free salsa lessons were wrapping up in Club Odyssey, the great room with the high beams absent of tables. The coffee shop is now called The Café, and the crowd was light.

The menu is drastically scaled back from its previous life, with a mix of sandwiches, appetizers, a few pasta dishes, steaks and a value menu, where most of the interesting items were concentrated. That's where we ordered, my companion choosing the salmon marinated in fresh rosemary and garlic ($17), while I selected the meat loaf ($13).

Before dinner we sampled the corn chowder, a salad and some fresh hot sourdough bread. The bread is an interesting part of local restaurant history. As I recall, a young chef from Seattle was hired at a couple of spots in town, notably a restaurant out at the old airport (one of many that tried to replace Freddie's Skyway House) and later over in the northeast. His pullaway sourdough ring was an immediate hit, and I believe it stayed behind to be served at restaurants even after he left. I know we've tried it at T.L. Maxwell's in the past. Sadly, this version was underdone and disappointing, an impression that was repeated throughout our visit.

For example, I was impressed that my companion's salad had a vinaigrette that tasted, if not fresh-made, at least like it came from a high-end Italian bottle and not your typical brackish Wishbone variety. But the vegetable mix was dull outside of a few cucumber slices and cherry tomatoes. My corn chowder had ham and potatoes in it, but precious little actual corn. My companion suggested maybe they pureed it. She just looks on the good side far too often.

The entrees continued the trend of tantalizing descriptions followed by crushing disappointment. The menu said my meat loaf was made with portobella mushrooms, red and yellow peppers and a Madeira wine sauce (which I noted had mushrooms). It was baked, then charbroiled, which I remember as a hot new meat loaf treatment back in the '80s. With all that in the mix, you'd expect a dazzling dance of flavors on your tongue. Instead it seemed like all-you-can-eat buffet food. The mashed potatoes tasted as if they were made from an instant mix, and my steamed vegetables varied from overcooked (broccoli) to undercooked (carrots).

My companion's salmon was presented with a nice fresh salsa on top and had been grilled over a flame, but it was dry, overcooked and had almost no presence of garlic and rosemary anywhere. I was intrigued by the combination, but found no evidence of it on the plate. It was served with a pilaf that was so lifeless my companion made jokes about Rice-A-Roni.

You may think our disappointment ended there, but I had to try dessert when I noticed a cookie crumb bread pudding with a Grand Marnier custard sauce. Again, something quite tempting and new to me. The top looked like a mix of granola and oatmeal cookies had been crumbled on top, but the sauce on the side had little of the sweet/bitter punch of the liqueur mentioned on the menu. My companion, sensing the failure, immediately heisted the sliced strawberry placed on the plate for a garnish after pronouncing it "craptacular." I don't think that's a word, and if we were playing Scrabble, I'd challenge her. Still, it was a pretty apt description. We ended up just leaving it behind. Those who know me well know how rare it is for me to abandon a dessert. Just not done.

The waitress seemed kind but shy and a bit green at her job. Fortunately there were only three other tables with customers, so she wasn't too stressed.