The Ram - Lacey, WA

A first choice place to go when my husband and I are looking for somewhere to eat, somewhere to snack, somewhere to have a pint, or somewhere just to hang out. Fun on a date or with a group of friends.

Honestly, we've never been on the restaurant side because we love the bar's seat yourself atmosphere. Happy Hour (9pm-close) is when you'll usually find us there. FULL SIZED appies and late night meals for half price. Cheap well drinks and pints. Very tasty.

Our favourite appies are:
- Potato Skins, loaded with toppings (including fresh crumbled bacon, not bacon bits) and delicious sour creamy dip.
- Buffalo Chicken Tenders, SO spicy and tangy, awesome blue cheese dip, clean and crisp veggies, and best of all, boneless. Always well cooked, crisp on the outside and nice and juicy inside.
- BBQ Chicken Quesadilla, a fantastic quesadilla. Lots of filling and flavour. Just a real good snack.
- Spinach and Artichoke Dip, very tasty dip although the bread dippers are a bit hit and miss. The garlic spread is delicious, but sometimes a bit heavy on some pieces and not enough on others. Once they're slathered in the dip, who cares. This stuff even tastes great the next day if you happen to be like us and order everything that tastes good since it's so cheap.

The next best thing about The Ram, is their awesome microbrews. If you're a first timer, I suggest starting with the sample horn. A generous 4oz sampler of six of their best selling beer. I like to do this at the start of the night then move on to my favourite, which seems to change every visit. Very good beer, with a good selection of domestic and imports on top of the house micros.

The service is pretty good there 90% of the time. Sometimes if you get there late you get a server who is pretty obviously at the end of their shift and wants to go home, but they still try to keep a smile on. We've always gotten our orders taken quickly, and our beer even quicker. Never a problem with refills, they're almost always right on top of it.

Another cool thing if you're just relaxing in the bar on a weekend night is the trivia pads. You can get these cool little digital consoles at your table that allow you to join in the trivia that's up on the smaller TV screens (the big ones are saved for any type of sporting event that's going on. VERY fun place during a game, but can be hard to get a table. Thankfully they don't seem to mind serving you a beer while you're hanging around the entrance waiting for one.

We're going again tonight. We'll go again before summer is over, and we're guaranteed to be there for good evening games during football season. Highly recommended! You can't go wrong with a $27 bill for two people during happy hour. Four appies and four pints - unbeatable!

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.

Restaurant.com

www.restaurant.com

We love it for the cheap gift certificates (although most come with a hitch, but they're still worth it) and wide variety of restaurants available. It's also cool because you can send the certificates as gifts.

The biggest bonus though, is that there are often deals where you can get $25 gift certificates for TWO BUCKS!!! The catch is that you have to spend $35 at the restaurant to use it, not including alcohol, but still! Two bucks for the certificate, and the extra $10 meal, makes a $12 (plus tip) charge for a $35 meal.

Warning though, as you'll read in my next post, always Google search for restaurant reviews *BEFORE* purchasing and using gift certificates.