In all honestly, I try my darnest to avoid outings to "big box" strip malls in Ottawa until it becomes absolutely necessary and I can "cluster-shop." That is, I tend to put off trips to Walmart until I find myself needing to visit stores around it as well. Why? I find the Walmart shopping experience infuriating. An impossibly large number of shoppers is always rushing about at high speeds pushing carriages overflowing with everything from traditional groceries to electronics, clothes, shoes, and the odd rug. Then, there are those purchasing furniture who decide to pickup their big box item first and wander the aisles aimlessly, forcing innocent bystanders to leap heroically aside for safety. Then, there are the teenage Walmart employees who are more interested in flirting with each other or texting their friends who are themselves working part time than help you find your next purchase. You know, when you reluctantly go to a Walmart to purchase that one item; when you are trying to navigate the maze of nonsensically placed merchandise in aisles that are marked by lying signage; when you are valiantly trying to avoid colliding with other shoppers and their purchases.

There are times I think the big box store shopping experience is purposely engineered to cause anxiety because Walmart and their ilk are in league with surrounding big box restaurants. Anxiety tends to make shoppers hungry. Hungry shoppers are so frustrated when they leave the stores they fall prey to the lunch or dinner specials at the nearby McDonald's, Harvey's, Montanna's, Moxie's, Denny's, or Kelsey's.

Such was the case this past Saturday when I found myself having put off certain chores and purchases to the point that I was forced to visit Kanata's Centrum, sadly the center of the west-end suburb. There, after my better half and I did some banking, we visited Walmart to find me a low cost pair of running shoes for the office. And, we went to Loblaws and Chapters', searching for the latest issue of the Ottawa Magazine. Speaking of which, can someone tell me why magazine purveyors in Ottawa are selling three issues of the Ottawa magazine? In the past two days, I have found the September and October issues on news stands, the former with its 101 Tastes piece and the latter with a profile of Chef Josh Brokington and his Rockland Gastro. The November issue was released Friday, containing Chris Knight's Top 10 list of fine dining restaurants in Ottawa. But, I digress...

After developing an anxiety-induced appetite, Jenn and I wandered into Kelsey's, she hearing there is a new lunch menu and me oddly craving a burger. Indeed, the restaurant that bills itself as somewhere that "knows your name", adopting the famous Gary Portnoy-sung theme song from the former sit-com Cheers, changed up their lunch menu for the fall. Served by a very friendly, personable, and helpful waiter, who just graduated from Algonquin college's advertising program, we ordered a peppercorn burger with a house salad and a new fall lunch entree, the Sheppard's pie. What we were served reinforced my misgivings about big box restaurants. Not knowing that we would be encountering crimes against food that day, I neglected to bring my camera.

Here is what the sheppard's pie is supposed to look like according to the Kelsey's website:

Kelsey's "Ideal" Sheppard's Pie (cheese-less), $11.99
Firstly, when "sheppard's pie" is made with beef, it is "cottage pie." Sheppard's pie is made with lamb. What Jenn was served was later confirmed to be made made from beef. It looked like three disher-portioned mounds of mince were put in a gratin dish, topped with mashed potatoes, baked, and more than likely finished under a salamander to colour the potatoes. After taking a bite, Jenn exclaimed, "This tastes like cheese!"

Indeed, grated processed mozzarella cheese seemed sprinkled over and crusted along with the mashed potatoes. We called over our waiter and consulted the menu again. There was no cheese in the menu description. Our waiter even exclaimed in surprise, "Cheese? Are you sure?" I scraped off a grating of cheese that had been baked onto the gratin dish's wall and responded, "Yes, cheese!" He then graciously offered to replace the dish, sans cheese topping, leaving Jenn with a plate of overcooked "buttered" peas. What surprised us about the peas, were the pearl onions. They tasted pickled! I always thought pickled onions only accompanied mushy peas and the dish had fallen out of fashion. What was served were sauteed from-frozen garden "sweet" peas.

My peppercorn burger ($11.49) came from the regular dinner menu. I asked it be accompanied with a house salad, instead of fries. The burger itself was made from frozen, its bun slightly over toasted and its topping of breaded onion rings, soggy and greasy. Why big box restaurants often neglect to drain their deep fried offerings for even a minute or two after frying is slightly beyond me. However, the burger met my expectations for a big box restaurant burger. The house salad was another matter. It too was topped with a prodigious amount of shredded mozzarella, resembling a McDonald's salad.

Our waiter returned, sheepishly telling us the cooks "make up the batch of beef in the morning and add cheese to the mix." He then asked us to order something else. Jenn chose the fish and chips, again from the new fall lunch menu.

Kelsey's Ideal Fish and Chips, $8.99
In making her choice, Jenn scanned the dinner menu as well. The lunch version of the sheppard's pie, which is guaranteed served in 15 minutes after ordering or free, is the same price as the dinner version, $11.99.

The fish and chips were marginally better than the cottage pie. The peas were somewhat better cooked, this time with no pickled onions. The haddock portion was small, only 4" long, but fried crisp and not grease soggen. Contrary to the image on the Kelsey's website above, the entree included one piece of fish, not two. Her fries were also unevenly seasoned with a barbecue chip-tasting seasoning. Jenn actually had to scrape off the excess to eat them.

In total, with an ice tea, taxes, and refunding the value of the disastrous cottage pie, the meal ran us $26.29

According to our bill, we can enter to win a chance at a $500 gift card if we complete a guest survey at kelseysfeedback.com with an access code. Let me think about that: $500 translates into many servings of small portioned fish, overly seasoned chips, over cooked peas and sauteed pickled pearl onions, and cheesy cottage pie. No thank-you!

The next time I go to Walmart in Centrum, I'm going to bring a sandwich with me. I have no wish to develop any sort of familiarity with Centrum's Kel-Cheese.

More after the jump...

Typical of Canadian suburbs, Kanata is replete with strip malls. Principle amongst them is the Kanata Centrum, a sprawling retail and entertainment hub for residents of the west end of the greater Ottawa area. Centrum is strategically located at the intersection of two major arteries, Terry Fox Drive and Kanata Avenue. Ottawa's Queensway (Highway 417) also exits onto Kanata Avenue within seconds of Centrum.

Typical of big strip malls, Centrum hosts a number of large chain restaurants. Here is a somewhat incomplete listing as new eateries seem to appear every 6 months, including a soon to open Montana's Cookhouse:

• Baton Rouge
• Boston Pizza
• Extreme Pita
• Harvey's
• Jack Astor's
• Joey's Only Seafood Restaurant
• Kelsey's
• Mexicali Rosa's
• McDonald's (inside of Walmart)
• O'Connor's Irish Pub
• Pizza Pizza
• Quizno's
• Scores Rotisserie and Ribs
• Starbuck's (inside of Chapter's)

Interestingly, Centrum once hosted one of Ottawa's 5 Denney's. Today, only 2 survive. The Centrum's closed shortly after 2004/2005 NHL lockout, blaming slumping sales on lower patronage during the hockey season. Scotiabank Place, home of the Ottawa Senators, is a 5 minute drive from Centrum.

What few family run restaurants at the Centrum serve ethnic fare and seat far fewer patrons than the large chain restaurants. They include Sushi Kanata, Ox Head Restaurant (a Vietnamese Pho house), and Thi Fusion (a higher end Asian fusion restaurant).

Recently, another large chain restaurant, popular in Western Canada, joined the fray, Moxie's Classic Grill. Previously, Ottawa's only exposure to Moxie's was in the form of a small establishment at the Bayshore Shopping Mall. The Moxie's restaurant at Centrum is much larger and more elaborate, capable of hosting approximately 200 patrons at any time in its dining room and lounge areas.

At the Centrum Moxie's, the atmosphere is intended to be sophisticated with dark coloured furniture, high seated tables, and an otherwise low light interior. It also features a very long bar with hundreds of bottles of 5 major brand liqueurs neatly displayed in a back lit floor-to-ceiling display case.

Jenn and I tried to go to the newly opened Moxie's at Centrum three times since the summer. Each time was with her family to celebrate a birthday. Each time we were given unreasonable wait times for a table to seat six people for dinner. Like the other 21 Moxie's establishments across Canada, the Centrum location does not take reservations for dinner on Fridays or Saturdays. This is problematic Friday and Saturday evenings when Kanata suburbanites tend to swarm the Centrum's eateries for dinner.

One Saturday afternoon, I accompanied a number of Jenn's colleagues to Moxie's for a celebratory lunch to mark the end of the fall semester. There, we discovered that Moxie's has a slightly modified front-of-house line-up.

According to its human resources (HR) website, the Centrum Moxie's employs, managers, supervisors, servers, lounger servers, bartenders, and hosts. To match its high end decore, Moxies employs multiple hosts and hostesses to create the "first impression", greet guests, "determine tables", "manage guest flow", take care of waiting guests, "create anticipation", seat guests, create the "last impression" and be the "last line of defense." At the Centrum Moxies, hosts are all female, blonde, skinny, and provocatively dressed. Waiters are all female, blonde, skinny, and provocatively dressed. This also seems to be the trend at other Moxie's as well. Take the Moxie's at the Yorkdale Mall in Toronto. Seven of the ten reviews on the restoronto-reviews.com website mention "stunning" female staff whose uniforms leave little to the imagination: "very short skirts" and "low cut tops." One, even likens the restaurant to a "top notch Hooters."

In Ottawa, there are rumors floating around that Moxie's contracts for its hosts differ from those for its waiters. Resembling more modeling contracts, there are specific clauses that involve weight gain and pregnancy. While I could find no evidence of such in the job descriptions from its HR website, all server positions mention "Quality, Service & Cleanliness (QSC) criteria " as duties. Hosts and hostesses have no such criteria listed.

This said, service during our lunch was replete with mistakes. Each was unforgivable because it was lunch time, there was no lunch rush, the majority of the tables were empty, and there was little turnover.

Mistake 1:
My better half ordered a glass of 7-up before we ordered our dishes. One of her colleagues ordered a club soda. The drink Jenn was served tasted like club soda, carbonated, but not sweetened. When we inquired, we were told that there was no mix up. The waitress then left to inquire about the odd taste. She returned telling us that "someone" had mistakenly not added any sugar to the batch made. She then dutifully took back the unsweetened glass and informed us that another will be forthcoming. When she returned, she told us that they were out of 7-up. This culminated in apology number 1.

More after the jump...