Buena Tavern

Without a doubt, the very worst restaurant I’ve ever eaten in. This includes all fast food outlets, all Denny’s and even a Las Vegas restaurant that had a roach crawling over my table.
The property is split into an upstairs bar and a downstairs dining room. We ate in the dining room.
It was a dark paneled dungeon plastered with paintings of clowns. That’s right. CLOWN PAINTINGS. Some clowns were happy, some were sad. There were at least twenty clown portraits on the wall and nothing else.
The waitress was nice. I ordered the surf and turf — a small piece of beef tenderloin and a small lobster tail — for $ 35, which is about average. I told the waitress I wanted the tenderloin cooked rare and she told me, «The chef doesn’t like to cook rare.»
The chef doesn’t like to cook rare. I see. I told her to tell him I wanted it rare. She said she’d do the best she could.
I got it medium rare. Apparently, it’s a temperamental chef who works among the clown portraits in the dungeon on Rt. 40 in a hick town. He wasn’t going to budge. Perhaps he feared the loss of one of his Michelin stars if he did RARE incorrectly? I hope he didn’t spit on my meat because I dared ask for a temperature he refused to cook.
Not that I would know if he spit on my meat, because it was completely unseasoned and still possessed of the silver skin and chain meat.
The lobster tail was small and overcooked.
The waitress talked and talked to us to the point of annoyance, working for that tip. Which she got. A firm believer that you tip for service and not food, I gave her 20% because she deserved it.
This place does a good business in cheap wedding receptions, apparently. $ 35 per person. And the bar must be pretty exciting, because there are always cars surrounding it on Saturday nights.
I think it should stop serving food.