First Watch or Last Choice?
We were in Winston-Salem, North Carolina for some weekend shopping and business when we got a little hungry for a midday brunch. We did a Google search for such places and got a list of three that looked interesting. Based on the reviews, we chose a place called First Watch. I wish we had chosen one of the other two.
In all my many years of dining on the road, from diners in Georgia to themed restaurants in Tennessee to high-dollar eateries in New Orleans and Las Vegas, I have seldom walked away from a place regretting having gone there. So First Watch was a first for me. I actually came away with buyers' remorse, except there was no viable way to return the product for a refund.
Oh, sure, I've eaten at places I didn't like and to which I've said “never again,” but this is the first place I've ever gone where I actively wished I had never wasted my time and money. Especially the money.
This experience also reinforces my long-held opinion that most of the people who write restaurant “reviews” on Google are friends and relatives of the restaurant owners and employees. That certainly must have been the case here because the reviews were overwhelmingly glowing and positive. Even the one where a member of the dining party apparently got food poisoning from a salad and wound up in the hospital. The enthusiastic “reviewer” cited the fact that nobody else got sick as validation for the positive write-up. Uffa!
When we walked into the place on a Saturday afternoon, it was, in spite of COVID protocols, buzzing. In fact, it was buzzing so loudly that we opted to sit outside, even though the weather looked a little dicey. I mean, you couldn't hear yourself think in there. Typical “modern” design: all open spaces and hard surfaces with nothing to absorb or redirect sound. Every noise, from clattering dishes to loud music to even louder conversation just bounces off walls and floors and ceilings and tables and goes right through your head. Thank you, no. We'll take our chances with the thunder and lightning.
Now, the menu ballyhoos the virtues of fresh, local food, and you know those are often buzzwords for “overpriced,” right? I expected that. And, sure, I could've gotten bacon and eggs at the Waffle House down the street for about a third of what I paid here, but this place is “trendy,” you know, and they've got all that atmosphere and fresh food and clever advertising and everything. Okay. Even so, I was shocked at the shekels I had to shovel out for the quality of the food and service I got.
I'm not gonna do the whole menu here because it's full of kitschy names like “Bacado” and “Veg'd Out” and “Key West Crepeggs.” My wife ordered what she thought was a traditional eggs Benedict and I got two eggs, scrambled, with bacon, hash browns and toast. Pretty straightforward fare.
Once we were seated, our server did a creditable imitation of the Invisible Woman. Maybe she was afraid of the impending and aforementioned lightning and thunder, I don't know. When she finally returned some twenty-five or thirty minutes later, she was bearing our feast. And what a feast it was.
I've been in the food service business, okay, and I'm pretty understanding and easy to please and you have to do something fairly egregious to get me to complain about food. When our server set my plate before me and I got one look at the absolutely hammered eggs thereupon, it was one of those egregious occasions. Had I been on the line or on expo duty, I wouldn't have even let such a travesty leave the kitchen. Some poor hen somewhere – somewhere “local,” I'm sure – produced two eggs that were subsequently presented to me in the form of burnt offerings. It's not hard to scramble eggs, it's really not. Whip 'em up with a whisk, maybe with a little milk and some salt if that's your preference, add them to a buttered pan over medium heat and stir them until you get nice, fluffy curds. Or you can do it the way the so-called “cook” at First Watch obviously did it: whisk the eggs up and then dump them into a dry, screaming hot pan and cook them until any semblance of moisture has been driven out and they have been rendered brown and crispy on top and around the edges. Needless to say, I sent them back.
The bacon – which they call “million dollar bacon” – was wafer thin and so laden with grease that I could have let it slide down without chewing it. Maybe I misunderstood and the “million dollar” part was a reference to the price and not the quality.
The hash browns came out as home fries, which is fine. I like home fries. Except when I make them, I remember culinary school 101: if you want something to cook evenly, you have to cut it evenly. When you chop up potatoes so that some of the pieces are big and some are small and some are even smaller, they may look exceedingly “rustic” and “homey,” but they are going to cook exactly the way these did: the big pieces are going to be borderline raw, the smaller pieces are going to be about right, and the teeny pieces are going to be charred mush.
Top it off with a single slice of very dry toast, and you've definitely got a memorable meal. One I wish I could forget.
My wife didn't fare much better with her fare. The poach on her eggs was good. Not “ohmygod” good, but acceptable. But her “traditional” eggs Benedict was anything but. Instead of an English muffin, it was served on some sort of ciabatta roll and it was sliced deli ham rather than Canadian bacon. There were tomatoes on it for some inexplicable reason and it was topped –drowned? – in a Hollandaise that was so loaded with lemon you could have made lemonade with it. And she had the same "three bears-style" potatoes on the side that I had. You know, a mix of undercooked, overcooked, and just right?
And because my mother taught me that if I couldn't say something nice I shouldn't say anything at all, let me say this: Mom, the fresh-squeezed orange juice was delicious.
And then it rained. But we were both finished and done by then; finished with our meal and done with First Watch.
First Watch is a chain, so your experience may vary. But if you happen to find yourself on South Stratford Road in Winston-Salem and are tempted to visit the location there, resist the temptation. Unless you like greasy bacon, overcooked eggs, half-raw potatoes, and lemonade Hollandaise, all served up by an invisible server who will present you with a bill that will make you say, “Why the f**ck did I do that?” Then First Watch should be your first choice. For me, it's the last.
Find First Watch – if you dare – at 1602 S Stratford Rd, Ste 140 in Winston-Salem, NC. Strip mall parking. They're open daily from 7 am until 2:30 pm. Call (336) 773-8440 or go to firstwatch.com. Staff is masked and temp checked and masks for diners are required during COVID protocols.
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