I'm a little touchy right now. Use my name, and bump me out of the top three hits in Google, and you'd better at least be good:
This Norma I like, and she actually had the name before I did. My name is Norma with middle initial J., for my maiden name. Two judges I worked with for many years always called me Norma Jean. Though I tried, I never was able to sway them from their mistaken belief that Jean was my middle name.
No, some new Norma Knits character has not entered the scene and stolen my name. Just a new slew, apparently, of overpriced restaurants with the name Norma's. WHY, all of a sudden, is the name Norma's so in vogue for restaurants? From what I can glean, the one in Manhattan is not new, but it is only just recently showing up on Google when searching for "Norma," so it must have just recently gotten a website or somehow padded the numbers so it shows up high under not just "Norma-apostrophe-s" but plain "Norma" as well. Still not higher than the friggin' ammunition company with the same name (WTF?) and now a pipe coupling group? HONESTLY! Who the hell visits a pipe-coupling group's website? Numbers are clearly being fudged here.
But the restaurant in New York, and the fact that hardly anyone is reading my blog anymore, has bumped me down to about sixth on the totem pole. I used to be able to brag, "Just Google Norma and there I'll be, about the third hit." Not anymore. My star has burned out. Pfffffft. Fizzzle, fizzle, sputter.
That's all right. Must be it's time to reinvent myself again. Stay tuned.
But I was intrigued. We'll be going to New York soon, and while there, we will dine at Bobby Flay's restaurant Mesa Grill again, as we enjoyed it so much last time. I thought, "Well, maybe we should go to Norma's, since I can't seem to avoid it, and see if it is ALL THAT."
So I looked at some reviews. They're mixed, except they all agree on one thing: It's expensive. But I did enjoy the following exchange that I read in a blog. The blogger wrote that the restaurant didn't treat his/her child very well. Even made the poor tyke drink o.j. from a paper cup!
(I apologize for the formatting issues, but it just.will.NOT.format correctly when I cut and paste it here, and Typepad will NOT allow me to indent it without in turn indenting my entire post, and it makes everything fugly as all get out.) [FIXED due to Rachel's help. Thanks, Rachel!]
But my big issue with Norma's? As their website claims...
Do we like kids? More than whipped cream.
Thing is, they sure don't act like they like kids (but judging by the menu, they sure like whipped cream). My 20-month old was given a rickety high chair, a paper cup from which to drink her juice from, and kind of brusque, disinterested service from our waiter. Generally, we found that in other restaurants that claim to be kid-friendly - Blue Smoke, Landmarc - the staff tended to be, well, friendly towards the kid; at Norma's the service was indifferent at best, and the maitre d' was especially chilly (perhaps because I wasn't in a suit-and-tie, although I think it was because his tie was too tight).
One of the blog's readers commented:
I love Norma's, but only when I'm in the mood to have a ridiculous, sweet, cavity-inducing breakfast (although I do like their foie gras french toast also). It's not gourmet food by any stretch, but I found the pricing pretty fair for what you get and the neighborhood, etc. I don't have kids, so I can't speak to the child-friendliness of the place, but knowing how crowded it can be I wouldn't think of it as an ideal place to bring a child that needs a high chair. As for the staff's indifference, well, I doubt that the management can dictate just how effusive their staff has to be when in the presence of children, and basic politeness is probably all that's "required." Not everyone likes kids (I SURE don't), and though I'm sure there are people that would have gone gaga over your little one, you may just have run into a few that are child-haters like me.
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That just cracked me up and made my day, because, you see, we've recently had some abysmal experiences with children (and their clueless parents) in restaurants. They ought to be banned. Seriously. They've banned smoking, and I often find that less offensive than people and their kids.
We did, however, have one relatively charming experience with children in a restaurant. And believe it or not, it was at another overpriced restaurant named Norma's. I kid you not. They're everywhere! They're like locusts! (Kids AND overpriced restaurants named Norma's.)
I don't have a lot of effusive praise about Norma's at the Topnotch. Their cold soup sampler was interesting, cute (read: teeny) and pretty, but I didn't order it -- David did -- and he doesn't love cold soups much, not to mention big flowers floating in his food, the way I do -- so he would have a different review to offer, I suspect. (The menu did not state that the soup sampler was cold, and none of the names were dead giveaways that it would be cold, so that part was a surprise.)
I ordered a pomegranate martini which tasted like a cough drop and cost about 13 million dollars. I couldn't finish it. Then again, every time I have ordered a flavored so-called martini anyplace (a Lemon Drop, for instance) I always think they taste like cough drops (and not in the good way), so I think it's possible that I just don't like martinis. I say "so-called martini," because honestly, does anyone really believe that sweet chocolate-mint concoction (or whatever the latest iteration is) is really a martini? But for the shape of the glass they are in, they bear absolutely no resemblance to martinis. But I digress.
At Norma's at the Topnotch, I ordered a local heirloom tomato salad, and it was horrid. Under-ripe, tasteless, pulpy tomatoes, cut in big chunks and piled up on the plate in what was an attempt at artful. It has been just an awful year for tomatoes in Vermont, and I get that, oh yes I certainly do. But then cut your losses. Make it into soup or sauce or don't serve it. Especially if you put a huge, hefty price tag on it. The restaurant makes a large claim that it relies on local ingredients in season, but that salad was the only "local" thing on there, and for an outsider, it would not speak well of "local Vermont cuisine."
The bread basket was awesome, and included some amazing cheese scones, but I shouldn't eat any of that (though I sure as hell did, for those prices). Because the prices for everything else were so exorbitant, we ordered burgers. Like $25 burgers. (I actually can't be sure of that price, but whatever it was, it was way, way too high for a burger, especially in Vermont, even if it is in chichi Stowe.)
Literally just down the hill from there, Abigail and I had stopped at a snowboarder-bum's burger joint a few days previous, and for $4 or thereabouts, we had the best burgers on homemade buns and the best fries and coleslaw ever -- easily up there in the top 5 burgers and fries I've ever had. I overheard the guy behind the counter say he'd been schooled at the New England Culinary Institute, and it seemed entirely plausible, dude. You just gotta love Vermont.
Norma's should be ashamed to charge what they do for admittedly a pretty nice burger, but at a steak price. The steak on the menu, it wasn't even filet mignon OR local, and the price was blasphemous.
Anyhoo, how did I get distracted into giving a full restaurant review? That wasn't the intent. It was all about the kids.
While we were there, a couple arrived with two children, and were seated two tables over from us. I groaned, because we had not long ago had to make a complaint when we took my mother out for dinner and the kids they seated next to us not only made it impossible to talk with each other, but came and got into my purse and nearly made me crazy. That night we made a pledge to each other that from now on when we went to a restaurant, we would ask the host/hostess to not seat any children near us. But there we were at a sort of fancy resort in Stowe, so it didn't occur to us that kids would show up. Little did we know.
(Google "Norma's Sign" image, and this is one that comes up, taken at some other place called Norma's that I might actually like.)
One of the kids with the family was school age, and one clearly going through Terrible Twos. But much to my surprise and pleasure, the mother was having NONE OF IT. The mother refused to allow that child to act like an ass, and she wasn't embarrassed to discipline him (no, it was not abuse) until he stopped pounding his knife into the table and throwing things and grabbing things and knocking things over. She got him under control and he acted like a civilized human being for the rest of the evening. Imagine that. I could almost die happy now.
I knew something very plainly in a flash, and I said to David, "They're not Americans." (between the lines: And thank GOD for that.) They were French or French Canadian.
Of course, the glowing moment took a different turn when, in the middle of the meal, the mother took the kids to the bathroom and the father started making eyes at me. Yep. French all right.
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