A foodie cries in the dark — Spring Mill Cafe, what happened? Few things are sadder than when a perennial place, a restaurant you have always relied on for good food, takes a dive. You go year after year, you take guests, invite friends and family, and then one Saturday night, bam, the quality falls as fast as a guy getting clocked right on the chin.
Such was our recent Saturday night dinner. Going with the usual high expectations, saying, why don’t we go more often, we arrived to find the usual colonial aged house and barn next to it. The large rooster with the name and 1978 painted on one side of the house. Very quaint.
We went in, and having forgotten to bring wine, we settled for one house red, one house white. When they came, I took one sip and almost choked it was so bad. What box did that come from?
It had been about six months since our last visit, and the menu had changed. The left side has gotten spare on the salads and repetitious on the foie gras — three choices. We chose to try the special mushroom soup — very litle cream — with a baked brie croquette. It was very fresh and good, a slight purple coloring from the mushrooms, and as good as it was, an appetizer should not be the height of the meal.
But let’s get to the point, the entrees. The server described the special, a cod fillet on risotto. And being a French restaurant, the coq au vin, seemed like a classic to chose.
Both dishes were sub-par. The cod was over-cooked and dry, the risotto too wet and the promised muscles and chorizo sausage were a rumor that I had to dig around until I found. Halfway through my meal, I pushed it aside. My wife, generous as always, said let’s switch, and we did. She knew I loved coq au vin — if that’s what it was!
When we got got home, we were so incredulous we looked up coq au vin recipe. This one lacked red wine base, only a weak chicken broth base; it lacked several basic ingredients as in the lardons, mushrooms, and suffice to say, I pushed it aside, too. This was too much. Both entrees?
We were both so disappointed we just asked for the check. This actually saddened us. A restaurant my parents first took me to in the 1990’s removed from our list.
The fact is, Spring Mill Cafe had crossed the ultimate line for a quality restaurant. The food was not bad, it was boring. And that is unforgivable for such a venerable place. Someone needs to fix that kitchen.
Seeing that we had barely eaten, we grabbed a pizza on the way home — which all in all, was a better meal.
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Outspoken Traveler 
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