Restaurant Review: The Nest

The Nest is a restaurant located very near the Inner Harbor in Baltimore. It's mainly a sports bar but does serve food as well, both lunch and dinner. They were advertising for a bartending job recently and Buppy and I decided to make a trip there, have some lunch, I'd apply for the job and we'd enjoy each other's company and the beauty of the Inner Harbor for a few hours. What a horrible idea.

They participate in Restaurant.com, so we thought it'd be a good idea to grab a certificate and give it a try. Their menu on the Restaurant.com website sounded like it had a few yummy items to try, like their crab dip, Parmesan onion rings and their half-lb.-of-bacon BLT. It sounded like normal bar food, so we knew what we were getting into when we bought the certificate; we had no unreal expectations.

When we arrived, we decided to sit outside and enjoy the nice weather; while not sunny, it was still a decent temp. outside. We started off with beverages --- I ordered a glass of water with no ice, no lemon. Buppy ordered a Coke. I got a glass of water with no ice and lemon on it and he ended up with a diet Coke; our server fixed the Coke issue after Buppy brought it to her attention. We decided on their "Big Daddy" appetizer as it had a good variety of things we both wanted to try. It came with their Parmesan onion rings, mozzarella logs, crab dip and chicken tenders.

The crab dip had no crab in it. I kid you not. It was orange-ish yellow cream cheese with nothing else in it. I've never had crab dip this blah, and I've tried a lot. The mozzarella logs were ok, although the marinara sauce was lacking. That, however, we'll chalk up to personal taste. The chicken tenders were ok, pretty generic and what I'd expected. The onion rings? No Parmesan cheese on them whatsoever. They were supposed to be, according to the menu, tossed in the cheese as soon as they came out of the fryer so it formed a coating on them (so it'd stick to them while they were hot). Nope, they were your run-of-the-mill onion rings that you get at any bar. We asked our server if they had more than 1 kind of onion ring and explained to her why we were curious; she said that it was only her 2nd day and offered to bring us some Parmesan to sprinkle on top. I'm sorry, but that was such the wrong answer. The correct answer? Offer to bring us an order made how the menu says it will be! Oh yeah, and the tortilla chips that came with the crab dip? Stale.

Our sandwich (we split one due to the large appetizer) came out (turkey club on ciabatta) with cold fries. And not like oh-it's-cold-outside-and-they-just-cooled-off-really-fast. No, it was more like they'd been made at least 10 min. prior to being brought to our table. The bacon on the sandwich? Probably cooked that morning or the day before, so it was cold and only about 3/4 cooked it seemed. They also only gave us about 3 min. with our appetizer before bringing out the sandwich and fries. Did you really think we'd have eaten much of it by then? Couldn't have waited another 5-10 min. before the sandwich came out?

The prices would have been reasonable had the food been even close to decent. I no longer want a job there, no matter how much I love bartending, because I can't serve people food I refuse to eat myself! Buppy and I agreed that this was one of the worst dining experiences we've ever had. We will not be visiting The Nest again, ever. Be warned if you plan to visit the Inner Harbor --- avoid The Nest!