Well, since Sydney's had been purchased by new owners and renamed, "renovated", and had a complete menu change, we had high hopes that it would be a better place to eat in Munising, Michigan. We first stopped here last spring in late May, and after having a not so spectacular experience, we decided to give it another try last month for Valentines Day. Both experiences were less than memorable.
For an appetizer, or as they call them "shareables", we ordered the boneless chicken wings. Now, correct me if I am wrong, especially by looking at that picture, but those are chicken tenders. They also have chicken tenders on the menu as a "shareable" so I am thinking maybe they just got our order confused. They weren't bad mind you, but all they were was deep fried chicken pieces with a side of ranch.
For lunch, my husband ordered the Whitefish Platter, which comes with a roll and choice of side dish. He said the fish wasn't bad and seasoned pretty well, but the mashed potatoes and gravy left something to be desired.
I ordered the 387 Specialty Burger, thinking that since it was named after the restaurant it must be pretty good. It is a patty on top of french fries smothered in a white cheese sauce (like Poutine), and topped with sauteed mushrooms. You get a choice of fries so I ordered the sweet potato fries, which were delicious. The mushrooms weren't from a can, thank god, and were seasoned really well. The white cheese Poutine sauce was super fresh, and one of the best cheese sauces I've had in the U.P. The burger, which I ordered medium, was not seasoned, the consistency of shoe leather, and the perfect frozen patty shape. They almost had a gold mine with this one! Why on earth, would you put a crappy burger like that, that literally tasted freezer burned, with everything else that is so delicious!?!?
When we went back on Valentines Day with two other family members and their young one, it wasn't looking so hot from the minute we walked in the door. It was around 5:30 PM and had it not been for the "open" sign, you wouldn't have even realized it was open. We were the ONLY people in the restaurant other than staff. Since we were supposed to get pretty bad weather we chalked it up to that and got seated in the bar area. When we left at about 7PM, there were two other tables that had come in since. That really is not a good sign. Now as for the service....
Other than the main menu, they had a few Valentines specials. Three of us went ahead and ordered the steak and side of pasta, but we all ordered different sides, pastas, and weird combinations. You are supposed to get a soup or salad first, but our waitress asked us all what kind of potato we wanted. We just figured maybe they forgot to put it on the printed out version and it came with the meal, so she took the rest of our order. One of us wanted the steak with a side of pasta with alfredo sauce, and two of us wanted the steak with the lasagna. She came back about 10 minutes later and finally said we were supposed to get a salad or soup, no potato, but that they would still be giving us the potato option free of charge. Two of us ordered salads and my husband ordered the broccoli cheese soup. The soup was the consistency of a condensed soup out of a can and looked terrible. He asked me if I wanted to try it, while glopping it on the spoon and letting it fall back into the bowl, but I opted out.
Our side salads came, and instead of a lettuce mix with veggies in it, or small amount of fresh cut veggies on top of a nice bed of lettuce, we got whole baby carrots, long onion strips and cut up cucumber which was fine, and large wedges of tomatoes. It was more like a veggies and dip tray than a salad but we all picked off of it and ate it regardless.
Finally, our main dishes came out. From the description of what we ordered I'm sure you can already see one main thing that is wrong here. One of us ordered the pasta with cheese sauce, and two ordered the lasagna. Somehow, we all ended up with the noodles but we were already an hour and a half in at this point and didn't feel like asking the waitress to fix it. The pasta sauce wasn't bad, and that was the only thing I ate fully on my plate. The steak cuts for everyone at the table were terrible. If you are going to charge anywhere near $25 for a steak dinner, you best make sure that the cut actually has meat on it. After dodging bones and cutting around fatty areas, I got a total of 5 bites of meat. The gravy on the meat was spectacular, but I think I could have butchered a better piece myself at home and certainly would not have paid over $12 for that plate of food we received.
To sum up 387, I'm not impressed. I'm sure the owners are nice, like everyone has told me, and the staff is nice, but nice people with inconsistent and not that great of food is an uneven combination that will only lead to nice people shutting down a disappointing restaurant. They need to train their staff better, get better ingredients to work with, and after they have fixed those problems, find a way to advertise more to fill the seats in the restaurant. The menu has amazing ideas that sound delicious, but they aren't being executed properly. If they are still open in the future, maybe we will stop in again and try it out but at this point, it is nowhere I would purposely choose to eat at.
387 Main Website
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