The Soft Parade

Gold Star Restaurant Doesn’t Receive Namesake

Usually I’ll take every new restaurant I try with a grain of salt (yes, the pun was intentional), but there’s only so far my taste buds and my patience can be pushed. Today my darling Gillian and I went out for a nice Sunday lunch at a place we haven’t tried before. We drove toward Coldbrook, Nova Scotia to try out one of the numerous restaurants we pass by when we drive toward the Coldbrook Drive-in Theatre and decided to stop off at The Gold Star Chinese & Canadian restaurant. We’re both huge fans of Chinese food and can never pass up a buffet. This place didn’t offer a buffet, but like I mentioned we were looking to try something different.

From the outside, The Gold Star has a rustic small-town kind of feel to it, something we both look for and enjoy. This wasn’t on purpose as when we walked inside, it’s as though we walked into 1977. But I’m not so superficial that I won’t eat at a restaurant because it hasn’t been renovated since it was built, but the immediate vibe I felt wasn’t a good one. Still, it’s only the look, so it doesn’t really matter that there was wooden “mack tack” (plastic sticky sheeting) everywhere and the bright red seats were held together by duct tape.

The waitress was the first issue. When a restaurant of any caliber has daily specials, the best way to let the customer know about them isn’t “the specials are in the menu.” That doesn’t sound very special to me, don’t you think? When she did take our orders, she did bring our Pepsi in only a minute or two. The Pepsi, straight from the can, came with one straw… We ordered two, but only one straw. I don’t drink with the straw anyway, but it’s not really her place to assume I don’t.

At every Chinese restaurant I’ve eaten at in my entire life, it’s never taken more than ten minutes for our food to arrive. After the first ten minutes of waiting, I received my egg roll as an appetizer and Gillian received her store-bought bread roll. The egg roll was older than myself, hard as a rock with one bite worth of cabbage on the inside with enough beef to take up the space that the end of my pinky finger does. We proceeded to wait another fifteen minutes as two other tables who came in long after we did got their food, one gentleman who came in five or seven minutes after we did ordered, ate, paid, and left before we got our “main course.”

At this point I was annoyed, but I held out faith for the food. I ordered one of the daily specials that came with the one small and old egg roll, five chicken balls, some honey-garlic ribs, and a helping of Chinese fried rice. I went for the chicken balls first, and with every bite I took I couldn’t taste anything but the grease. Having worked fast food before I know that when all you can taste is grease, it’s because the deep-fryer hasn’t been cleaned in a long time. I was attempting to eat my rice with the chicken, but the soy sauce drenched rice was incredibly dry and tasted burnt, so I gave up on it. So that left the ribs, which tasted just as old as the egg roll. So by this it took over twenty minutes to deliver me food that tasted like it was sitting around all day. I didn’t finish even half of my meal before I got disgusted. $7.50 plus the $2 or so for the can of Pepsi.

Gillian ordered the Seafood Platter which came with a piece of breaded haddock, deep friend scallops, deep fried clam strips, fries, coleslaw, and peas for $13.75. The clams and scallops tasted at least average, but the scallops did have a slightly tinged taste and smell to them, leading us both to believe they may have not been the freshest seafood ever served. Since I had eaten like an anorexic bird I was snacking on her fries, which were so cold you could swear they had been in the refrigerator. Gill too didn’t finish her meal as she became disgusted by the flavourless haddock (again due to the dirty deep fryer) and we left. It’s also worth noting that none of their dishes matched and their utensils were covered in water stains.

This disgusting and poorly cooked meal cost over $27.00 with taxes included. I didn’t pay myself as I couldn’t wait to get out, so when Gill brought back my debit card and receipt I had to talk myself out of going in and demanding my money back from the owner, one Frank Fong, who was at least 75 years of age and whom had a hunched back and walked extremely slowly. Seeing him answered why our meals were cold at the very least.

Another complaint I have about this place is their pricing structure. For example, if you ordered a sandwich and wanted a very thin slice of tomato added, it would cost a dollar. A loonie for a slice of tomato. You could go to the farm markets in the area or even the larger grocery stores and get at least one entire tomato for a buck! If you make any alterations to their menu (i.e. changing a way you want your chicken), they charge you for that. If you order a family meal for take-out, the prices are the same but doesn’t include the drinks included in the price. There are a myriad of low-brow price tactics they use that I won’t even bother listing here.

The Gold Star is located just off of Highway One in Coldbrook, Nova Scotia. McDonald’s and Wendy’s are both located down the street, too, so do yourself a favour and get something that’s eatable, cheaper, and sadly to say healthier. This is by far the worst eating experience in my twenty-three years on this Earth and I highly urge you to stay away from this establishment.