Wednesday, October 31, 2007

For those of you who've never clicked on the links on the lefthand side of this blog, I encourage you to do so. Friends' blogs are listed there (and even those that aren't updated are pretty good--and often very funny). Additionally, I've listed just a few websites that I visit with frequency.

Among them is yelp.com. Yelp is a website that's apparently very popular in other places around the country, especially in California. You create a profile for yourself, providing as little or as much information as you're willing to submit. After that, you can write reviews for any type of local business you can think of: bars, restaurants, cinemas, banks, gynecologists, you name it. Anyone, yelp members or not, can look on the site to see what regular people--people who haven't been paid to say they feel a certain way about things--really feel about establishments.

I think it's a cool idea despite its not having taken off in Athens.

Here's my Clocked! review. I don't take too much time to write my reviews on yelp, nor do I take too much time to write my blog entries here. In any case, I don't need to give you a disclaimer. I just encourage you to visit the site and check it out.


259 W Washington St
Athens, GA 30601
(706) 548-9175

Clocked

Category: American (New)


8-14-07:
Dear Lord. How many times can a girl swear off Clocked!? I have yet to give it another try since a new guy started managing it a few months ago, but going to this place can take upwards of an hour and a half out of your day.

But let's start with the good. The decor is fabulous--colorful, sparkly walls, gloriously tacky chandeliers, and awesome posters. The food is pretty good (but not amazing, in my opinion and many of my friends'), and the outdoor seating is a plus.

The staff seem overwhelmed when the place is more than half-full. It can take a while to get your glasses of water, even longer to get your order taken, and then comes. the. waiting. for. the. food.

The overpriced diner food. I just don't get what the big deal is.

The Cajun fries are good, esp. if you order feta dressing--but let's face it, we're stealing that trick from The Grill, an honest-to-goodness diner around the corner. That one burger with blue cheese on it is quite tasty, but when you're ornery after waiting for 45 minutes it's hard to enjoy.

And yes, this experience has repeated itself many times over. And no, I am far from the only one.

So, sorry, Clocked! Maybe I'll try you again another time. When I have a lot of time. And a lot of faith.

(P.S. As for their delivering--if you're at a nearby bar on Washington St., they'll take your food to you. You'll have to ask them how far they'll walk. That's pretty awesome.)

9-03-07:
I went there again the other night, remembering this here review and thinking to myself, "I should give this place another chance. AGAIN."

First exciting thing I noticed: they'd replaced the glaringly bright fluorescent lights in the funky overhead chandeliers with good old incandescents. I am an environmentalist at heart, but I'm also one for nice lighting and happen to be photophobic when it comes to fluorescents, so those lightbulbs meant I couldn't eat indoors before. Now the glaring white has been replaced by a warmer, softer color that makes the place as welcoming as it was before. Close call, folks, as the best thing going for this place is its atmosphere.

Pretty yummy, overpriced grilled cheese. $3.75 for a medium-sized sandwich that was perfectly grilled--melted cheddar delight. But only a few slices, so the pieces of bread touched themselves if you squeezed the sandwich in the least. Not the best sign of a supa grilled cheese.

The cajun tater tots were yummy but, ya know, tasted like frozen tater tots heated up in the oven instead of in the microwave.

And
the
service
was
realllllllyyy
realllyyy
slow.

Not like the other times I've gone, but it was pretty bad. Guy put his finger in our glasses as a means of carrying them (ew!), said the food would be "just another minute" when it was ten, and we were there for quite a while. Good thing I had nice conversation and a pretty dinnermate to look at.

Clocked, you did it again, you vicious beast.

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