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Chef’s Corner Archives By Chef Bill Mitchell 'Catered To Your Taste!'
A Review on Lavender Hill Farm in Escalon and the Black Oak Cafe |
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Chef’s Corner Archives By Chef Bill Mitchell 'Catered To Your Taste!'
A Review on Lavender Hill Farm in Escalon and the Black Oak Cafe |
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Doing restaurant reviews doesn’t limit me to just restaurants. Sometimes I might be at a festival or a winery tasting food. This past Sunday Cindy and I visited a farm. Not a farm in the sense of cows, chickens, rows of corn and a John Deer. No, this just isn’t any ordinary farm but indeed a very interesting one. You see this farm is rows of Lavender. Lavender Hollow Farm in Escalon is really something special to see. Nestled in the outskirts of Escalon just right next to Riverbank, 8 acres of rolling hills has been transformed into a sight to see. Beautiful manicured mounds of lavender enrich the scenic view with its tranquil setting. Eight acres, owned and operated by Bill & Alice Taylor, has been transformed into 21 varieties of lavender, which they make into many different products that they sell on-line and on seasonal days. During the seasonal days they put on a Tea party with of course Lavender tea and scones. The house is something out of a Norman Rockwell painting. Table settings, teacups and saucers were in the Victorian fashion period. Alice had wonderful servers waiting on you hand and foot you were never out of tea or scones. At seven dollars a person, I rate this a four star stop. If you would like to see what products that they have, just visit their web site; www.lavenderhollowfarm.com On the other hand we also had lunch on Saturday at the Black
Oak Café inside the Black Oak Casino. It’s not the first time we had had lunch or dinner there. But this time we were
disappointed. We arrived in a short line around 12:40 pm and was greeted by a hostess who sat us and asked if we wanted
something to drink. She came back with our drinks and didn’t say our server will be right with us to take our order. We sat
for ten minutes before I stopped one of the three hostesses that were there and asked her to tell our server that we were
ready to order. Now, I know a lot of people in the food industry who are food servers and I know it can be a very demanding
job especially if you are under staffed. I think that was the case with the café at that time. We gave our order at 12:50 by a
friendly server and waited twenty minutes for a prime rib melt and a meatloaf sandwich. I don’t know if my meatloaf sandwich
was supposed to be hot or cold because it was luke warm. They gave me two cuts of meatloaf on a toasted sourdough sub roll
with tomatoes, onions and lettuce open faced. It was hard to eat because of the size, what they should have done is cut it on
a bias with a tooth pick to hold it together. The meat really didn’t have any flavor along with Cindy’s prime rib melt. The
only time the server came back was to leave the bill. At that point she should have said “would there be anything else,
dessert, coffee?” or “how was everything”. I rate this, on a corporate scale, two stars. We’ll go back because what I know
about restaurants, especially ones that are a fast turn around, is that they will have different cooks. Happy Cooking!
For More Recipes By Bill Mitchell
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