Buy one get one free at Clean Plate Club Today ONLY

I got this email last night but just opened it:

http://www.e-maillogic.com/cleanplate/cpcfriends.htm


It's good at Merles, Davis St. Fish Market, and Pete Millers. I'm probably going to Davis St. when Denise gets back from Ohio in the next hour or so.

We just went out for a long-overdue night on the town and ate at Pete's - used to be the go-to place in Evanston if you were feeling flush. While the service was fine and the jazz combo terrific, we had a pretty terrible meal, especially for the prices.

I'm finding this to be true at Clean Plate Club locations more often than not, when they used to be destinations for us. Anybody know what's up?

To be specific, our meal started with the goat cheese marinara - a huge plate of marinara sauce which did NOT look homemade, with little dollops of mostly submerged cheese - and not enough 'parmesan toasts' to put it on. I wasn't expecting more cheese than I got - I just wasn't expecting to play hide-and-seek. My husband had a New York Strip with blue cheese sauce which could have come from Outback Steakhouse; it wasn't trimmed, so the edges were overdone, and was covered with a gloppy, oozing broken mess. I had a Maine lobster, which was the highlight of the meal (half-naked, almost like you get them in PEI) but there wasn't anything different or spectacular that justified the price. The sides were soggy roasted rosemary potatoes and an undressed splat of garlic mashed.

I WANT to like CPC restaurants; they're all about my hometown. I love the atmosphere and the jazz at Pete's - but we are the kind of people who are all about the food - and if it doesn't improve, we won't be back.