The Urban Onion - Olympia WA

Had a gift certificate for this place, so my husband and I thought we'd try something new for our weekly date night.

BAD CHOICE.

Great location, strange entryway (wouldn't want to be seated in the mezzanie) but a great dark vibe in the actual dining room. After being seated, we were served quite quickly (although we were the only people in there) and asked what beers were on tap, and our waiter had a tough time remembering (there were only four or five) and couldn't tell us which was a pale ale.

Ordered two appies and two entrees. The hummus plate had fantastic hummus but was accompanied by severely overcooked pita chips that could have caused dental damage. Not only that, but there were only about six tiny chips. The dish was also served with carrots that weren't pealed well and chopped all sorts of sizes, from a big 1" x1" chunk, to small bits that were too flimsy to dip. Same with the cucumber - big thick steaks of it, to little crooked cut shavings.

The second appie was the Mediterranean salad. This sounded just like a greek salad, so I was super excited as it's one of my favourites. The waiter asked what kind of dressing I'd like on the salad, which confused me for a minute, then I decided on the oil and balsamic dressing since it didn't come with and they didn't have a greek dressing. The greens were good and crisp, other than the two dirty cores that were in it, the tomatoes were piled in a mash of horribly chopped mess, the cucumbers were again big steaks of cucumber mixed with crooked shavings, and half the kalamata olives still had pits in them (again, very nearly a dental disaster). The worst of all though, was the "feta". The "cheese" on the salad was two big ice cream sized scoops of what tasted like spoiled goat milk cream cheese. It was NOT feta whatsoever. It was not dry and savory, but just wet hunks of nasty on my salad. You couldn't toss it into the salad to enjoy some with every bite, but just got big mouthfuls of it.

Entrees next. My husband got the spicy vegetarian curry. I asked the waiter if it was an Indian or Thai curry, as I make a mean Thai one and was only interested if it was Indian. He assured me it was Indian. It wasn't, it was Thai. Not only was it not Indian, it was so bloody hot that it should have come with much more than the "Vegetarian Spicy Curry". We're big fans of heat in our meals, but this was TOO hot. You get used to a certain level of heat when eating in restaurants, but this should have had a disclaimer. It was un-enjoyable. And not just because of the heat, but because of the undercooked veggies, big chunks of uncooked mushroom stalks making us think there was sausage in the dish, all thrown on top of basic brown rice. This is a dish that would cost about $0.75 to make at home. There was no presentation value at all. Very disappointing.

I ordered the Blue Cheese and Mushroom burger, with the ground sirloin burger. The waiter had no idea what a sirloin burger was until I pointed it out to him as being offered on the menu. They were out of fries, so I'll have to assume that they're as good as other reviewers say. The burger came, plain as the curry. No tomato or lettuce, or any sort of topping or condiment. The meat of the burger was fantastic tasting and seasoned and cooked perfectly. The bun was pathetic. The blue cheese was quite generous and tasty, but the mushroom was a total of ONE chopped and burnt mushroom. The blue cheese dressing on the side salad I had to substitute was good though.

So the service was poor. The waiter didn't come back to refresh our water, and didn't offer us another beer until we were finished everything (even though the glass was empty most of the meal). He brought our entrees when we weren't even finished one appie, and brought our bill shortly after we were served the entree. We were never offered the onion bread they are known for, and weren't offered dessert. To top it all off, because we used a gift certificate, he added an 18% gratuity to the bill without mentioning it, and we were taxed on the gratuity. I wouldn't even have left 10%.

We'll never go back.