Evening Four - Valentino's

Having learned our lesson on our last attempt to eat at Valentino's, where Sandals invites us to "Experience the best of Northern Italian dishes and wines served by white-gloved waiters at Valentino's", we cut our afternoon nap short and rushed so we could arrive by 7:00, as we did not want to inconvenience the staff.

The restaurant was very pretty and the waiters did wear white gloves. Our waiter wasn't very friendly, but we were hopeful that dining in one of Sandals' more "upscale" restaurants might finally deliver the culinary experience we were promised.

Once again, we anticipated diet frozen entree-sized portions, so we ordered three starters.

The eggplant in the Eggplant Pomodori was cooked perfectly. Unfortunately, the tomato sauce was the same lackluster, commercially processed stuff served at San Gennaros.

The Caesar Salad wasn't the real deal, but considering few restaurants take the five minutes required to make this simple dressing from scratch, I wasn't expecting much.

The Insalata Caprese was acceptable. The tomatoes were as ripe as could be considering it wasn't tomato season and the mozzarella, while not homemade, at least it was the proper type.

My fiancée ordered the Frutti Di Mare, assorted seafood over pasta with a tomato-based sauce.

Look familiar? It should, as it was the same tiny frozen shrimp, scallops, imitation crab, even the same two mussels, as the Seafood Rundown we were served at the Manor. Except this time, it was swimming in a mediocre tomato sauce rather than the overly spicy Caribbean sauce that rendered the Rundown dish inedible.

And who's the genius who thought to add a lime as a garnish to a tomato-based Italian sauce?

I was happy to finally see the presence of filet mignon on the menu, as all the other restaurants use the inexpensive sirloin cut for all their steak dishes. At home, I never use sirloin except ground in hamburgers (80% chuck, 20% sirloin) or for kabobs, and those get marinated overnight to tenderize this chewy and inferior cut.

On page 103 of the Sandals catalog, we are informed that Valentino's serves fresh pasta. I love fresh pasta. It's only two ingredients, eggs and flour, but it requires ten minutes of kneading, running it through a pasta roller and cutting. Most restaurants save time by using boxed pasta.

So, knowing that the portion sizes would be disappointing, I ordered the filet meal as well as the fettuccine with marinara sauce meal:

This picture was taken before my first bite. Great presentation, huh?

As to the "fresh" pasta, it was evident that it was freshly removed from a box of dried pasta. Anybody who has cooking experience can tell, even from my picture, that the pasta wasn't fresh. And it was obvious the cooks were upset that I ordered two entrees. Rather than giving me the meal portion of pasta that I requested, which would have translated to a typical side portion size anyway, they stingily threw a less-than-side-dish portion on my plate out of spite.

The sauce that you see on the plate is part of the filet dish, not the pasta sauce. If you notice, the pasta barely has any sauce on it, a habit at every restaurant at the resort.

The cooks at Valentino's also pulled off another first. While the filet looks nicely seared outside, it was stringy, hard to cut through and had a boiled taste inside, a result of bad butchering and inexperienced preparation. Filet is one of the easiest cuts to cook. All you do is grill on each side 3-5 minutes, depending on desired temperature and serve. I've never had a filet, not even an inexpensive supermarket cut, that was tough and chewy like this one. At least they spared me the lime.

Out of curiosity, I asked the waiter if the Bolognese sauce was a true Bolognese or just the same meat sauce as San Gennaros. Can you guess which it was?

I didn't take any notes on our desserts, but I don't recall anything special about them.

 Evening Five - Arizona

Ah, the infamous fajita incident. You can read all about our entree experience from hell here, but let me illustrate how Arizona's staff were utterly clueless on how to run a restaurant.

Arizona is literally on the beach. The food preparation area is in the Riviera Building, but all the tables are in the sand, just a few inches from the rising tide. It is also very, very dark at the tables. Perhaps it's intentional, as I suspect many people would leave if they saw what they were eating.

Putting a "western style grill" in a romantic setting, directly on the beach seemed an odd choice. Western grills are usually rustic and well, western themed. A more appropriate use of that valuable real estate would have been a French, Italian or Mediterranean restaurant.

There was a 45 minute wait, with perhaps six or seven couples ahead of us. However, there were six or seven empty tables. I asked the hostess whether they were "VIP" tables and she said they were not. I later realized that the staff just couldn't get them cleared promptly.

When we were finally seated, we were invited to enjoy the "Chili and Salad Bar". As we were starving by this point, we were happy to be able to help ourselves right away.

Unfortunately, we couldn't quite help ourselves because of a few minor issues:

We stood for five minutes, with a bunch of other couples, expecting the staff to begin replenishing the missing items. After five minutes and no refills, we gave up and sat down.

I won't rehash the fajita incident again, but the one thing that distinguished Arizona from the other restaurants was that not only did they serve the most pathetic dish this side of a Colombian prison, but they literally didn't know the basics on how to run a restaurant. As in; seat customer, bring food, clean table, repeat.

Boy, were we glad we paid all that money to have "luxury included"!

Evening Six - Orchids and Market Place

Orchids is described by Sandals as "intimate fine dining with a la carte Oriental cuisine at the Manor House". It's also one of the "fancier" restaurants, as men are required to wear pants, not shorts.

We arrived around 7:00 and entered the boiler room-hot entrance and asked the hostess if there was a wait. As there was not, we explained that we wanted to have a martini at the Manor Bar and we would return in a short time. I asked her if she could put our name on the list, in the event they became busy. She gruffly declared that they don't take reservations. I explained that I wasn't asking for a reservation, merely to be placed on the wait list if one developed. Never mind, evidently that was too luxurious a request for a luxury included vacation.

When we returned, we were seated without a wait. We ordered two appetizers and they arrived 15 minutes later.

The Pork and Shrimp Potstickers were overly breaded and very deep fried tasting. None of the delicate and subtle Chinese flavors typical of this dish.

The Sushi wasn't what sushi restaurants in America refer to as "sushi". Sashimi is raw fish. Sushi is sliced raw fish over sushi rice. Rolls are usually listed separately and appropriately enough, as "Rolls" on the menu. Orchid's sushi, was in fact, rolls with, I kid you not, no fish discernible anywhere within them.

For our entrees, I tried the Red Curry Chicken. The sauce tasted good, but the chicken was so overcooked, it was tough, stringy and basically inedible.

My fiancée had the Sesame Crusted Snapper, which was also so overcooked that it was inedible.

We had enough and simply got up and left.

Just across the hall was the Market Place, where we had eaten breakfast every morning. Still hungry, we tried our second restaurant of the evening.

The restaurant was nearly empty and we were seated quickly. We ordered two appetizers, the Steamed Mussels (I just had to see if the four mussel appetizer at Bayside was an anomaly) and the Crispy Spring Roll.

Yes, the mussels were the same infant-sized portion. And the spring roll was deep fried and heavy, like the Pot Stickers at Orchids. Uh oh... we're going to strike out at two restaurants in the same evening.

We both ordered the Lobster Medallion, as lobster was something touted on Sandals' sample menus, yet made no appearance except at this one restaurant. Ditto for the Grilled Lamb, which I love eating at home, albeit rarely, as it is overpriced.

The three small chops were seasoned nicely, but the they were chewier than usual and so small, each only had an edible area equivalent to an American quarter.

The lobster medallions, while only slightly overcooked and small (a small tail cut in half) was the best meal we were served. We literally almost cried. We gushingly asked our waiter to complement the chef. We high-fived each other. We basked in the orgasmic glow of eating food that resembled the food it was supposed to be.

Sure, I wouldn't have been impressed if a local Florida seafood restaurant served us this dish, but our expectations were so low at this point I wanted to kiss the smiling cook on our way out who was apparently informed of our pleasure with her food skills by our waiter.

The pasta served with the lobster was unfortunately, so dry we couldn't distinguish the sauce, but as I mentioned, this is a resort-wide habit.

For the fist time in a week, we didn't have to stop at the gift shop to stock up on chips to fill us up after dinner.

And now, the final installment....