Hale's Ale House

I give up. No more Hale's for me after yesterday's amazingly bad experience.

First of all, my coffee barely beat the food to the table. I understand brewing a new pot, but it took forever. I'm quite sure she had forgotten as it came immediately after I asked for her to check on it....and I never received a refill.

In our group we had two pizzas, a hamburger and an order of some sort of green bean dish. The pizzas were not cooked properly. I have never eaten a pizza so doughy. The burger was way overcooked and the beans were a little of both. Some were cooked and others were nearly raw (like they dumped them in a pan and didn't bother to mix them up during cooking). Lazy.

The pizza debacle was obvious and they did compensate us for the terrible food. Hey, they even brought out dessert. Great! We might have returned to give them another try if...

...the waitress hadn't come back out to inform us "they" said the beans should be cooked al dente. Wow. She came back out as we're leaving to tell us the customer is wrong. Amazing. However they were supposed to be cooked, I'm quite sure they should have been cooked uniformally throughout the dish. Not the some hot and some cold that made it to the table. The complaint wasn't about al dente beans. The complaint was that some were cooked and some were nearly raw.

They must have known they were having a bad day with the super long wait times and subpar food making it to the table. To jab the customer on the way out the door, after initially making it right, is inexcusable. I felt like I was in an episode of Kitchen Nightmares. That bad.

I had heard some very bad things about Hales from a trusted friend of mine and would have never even tried it had I not bumped into a friend on Christmas eve and needed a place to have dinner, checked Silver City and it was all looked up, so I said "what the hey, I'll try Hales".  We ended up having a really pleasant evening and I was particularly impressed with the unique food on the menu, friendly speedy service, and lots and lots of food and beer options.  I had the schnitzel and was very pleased with my meal, as well as the desert which was large enough for two to be satisfied.

If my visit is anywhere near average, then I am a fan.  However because it was kind of slow at the time I would like to try it again at a more standard time to see if my experience was legitimate.

i won't lie, i was a bit hesitant to go to hale's because it's attached to the mall, and im my experience, mall restaurants are not good! but we had a great meal at silver city the night before, and that's in the mall parking lot, so we just decided to go for it.

i also have to mention, that not only did we just move here, but we have been living out of a suitcase for the past 10 days. that means eating out for every meal, and while that was exciting for the first few days, this was the 9th day, and i was ready to cook dinner in our new home.

so we get to hale's and it is a really beautiful day, so we decided to sit outside. our server was very sweet and fast. for beer, i decided to order something a little different and get a green tea gold. my husband wasn't a fan, but i thought it was delicious :)

we ordered two appetizers; the buffalo french fries, and an avocado eggroll, which was a special for the evening. they were out of the egg roll, which i was kind of bummed about, but we had already ordered plenty of food, so no big deal.

the fries were good, though all of the toppings & sauce were only plated on one side. so half the fries were drenched in buffalo sauce, and the other half were naked. i would prefer my fries not to be swimming in buffalo sauce, but i ate them all the same.

for dinner i ordered a special, the vegas burger and my husband ordered the ribs.

the ribs were dry and not very flavorful. my vegas burger was HUGE, perhaps the largest burger i have seen. intimidated, i noshed on the potato "chips", which were undercooked slices of potato. i deconstructed my burger a little bit so i could actually take a bite out of it, and when i did, something about the texture was off. i looked down and the hamburger was raw. i looked at my husband and said "um, is this safe to eat?". he said no, so we tried to flag down our waitress. she was busy, but we got her attention a few minutes later, she apologized and said she would bring out another one right away, and apologized again and again. mistakes happen, so i wasn't really worried about it.

how long does it take to refire a burger? that is the question, because about 15 minutes go by, still no burger. 20 minutes, still nothing. by now, my husband is done with the ribs and two beers, and i still don't have a burger! i asked the waitress if it would be ok if i could take my replacement burger to go, as it was getting late and i really just wanted to go home. she said of course, and then brought us out a slice of the white chocolate raspberry cheesecake.

cheesecake for dinner, thanks hale's!

my to go burger finally came out with our check. our waitress apologized again, saying she'd hope we would come back. i told her we would (we probably will). the misses here came from the kitchen, not our waitress, she was gracious and proactive about the situation.

by the way, when i got home, cut into my new burger, it was still really rare. it was borderline for me.