Robardo H.
Yelp
I took a date to Silver Creek the other night. It has been many years since I was in Urbana, and I didn't realize the Sliver Creek now has a reputation for being a place to ostentatiously spend lots of money to receive bad food.
We ordered the calamari appetizer, lamb chops, and the prime rib special.
The service was exemplary. Superb. It couldn't be better. The ambience is the best you can expect from an old abandoned wood-frame building which should have been (and perhaps was) condemned in the 1960s. At least the building is still kind of interesting, even if the floors do not creak exactly the way they used to.
The calamari was inedible. It didn't look anything like the pictures of calamari in the other reviews posted here. There were essentially no "rings". The calamari meat consisted of tiny diced randomly-shaped pieces of what was probably squid at one time. It was greasy and moist to the point that neither one of us could pick it up off the plate. Usually the soggy breading would slip off the meat, making it impossible to pick the meat up -- even with a fork -- or even if your fingers were buried in the dish. It was a very greasy and messy situation.
The lamb chops were excellent. Very tender, and tastefully seasoned. They were the kind of quality I had learned to expect from Silver Creek ten years ago, even if it was impossible to spend as much money there, then, as is required, today: Now, at Silver Creek, you can buy better, but you can't pay more.
I ordered the evening special prime rib "pink in the middle." Even though we had a fairly long discussion with the waiter about how the naming conventions mean different things in different parts of the country, and I made him repeat back, "pink in the middle," when the steak arrived, it was shoe leather. Perhaps it was just a random, but very bad, cut of meat. Occam's Razor tells us the extreme overcooking may be the only problem.
I could not chew the first bite I cut off of the steak. Being on a date, I tried to power through the piece, but it had some kind of gravel rock-like HARD grit in it, as well as the extremely large portion of fat. The fat (or meat) was seared to the point it was burned black on the bottom, and there was no way to tell what it used to be before it became HARD carbon fiber.
Unfortunately I had already put the first piece in my mouth when I discovered that it not only had an inedible flavor, but could not be chewed -- even to the possibility of breaking a tooth. Luckily I have read Emily Post in entirety to prepare for such emergencies. I recollected that Ms. Post decrees the proper etiquette for dealing with an inedible bite of food is to unobtrusively spit the offending food into one's napkin, which I did.
Unfortunately I had no other napkin, and the excellent waiter was no where to be found. I placed the (cloth) napkin back on my lap with the bad and partially-chewed bite of meat folded inside it. As luck would have it, the disgusting wad of half-chewed steak fat and gravel rolled out of my napkin, across my pant leg - staining it, and fell to the floor. This was terribly embarrassing, although no one seemed to notice, and the excellent waiter pretended not to notice the unsightly greasy lump on the floor when he came back to the table.
I was holding back, biting my tongue, trying to keep from embarrassing my date by rudely sending the meal back to the kitchen -- which, in retrospect, is exactly what I should have done. Never have I been so insulted by such apparently purposeful abhorrent cooking. But I have, in the past, sometimes remained silent in favor of maintaining a low profile for miscellaneous extraneous reasons, and I chose to do so, again.
Had I known that Silver Creek has become famous for being the kind of place where you can purchase inedible food for $130, I would have gone elsewhere to begin with. We used to have small high school reunion groups get together for hors d'oeuvres, drinks and discussion at Sliver Creek. You can bet we will NEVER go to Silver Creek again!
It is a shame that, just because Urbana is a small town in the middle of nowhere, these kinds of abusive restaurateurs believe the clientele are bumpkins, and they can abuse them without end, and without consequence. Whomever is responsible for the extreme slip in quality to the poor food at Silver Creek should be run out of town on a rail. (And I note that the rails are conveniently nearby.) This meal is truly one of the worst I have ever eaten in a restaurant - and that includes places like McDonald's. Without doubt, this was the worst meal I have ever paid $130 dollars for.
For shame! For SHAME!! NEVER AGAIN!!!
