Sweet Lorraine's

At the beginning of this week, A friend and I dined at Sweet Lorraine's in Southfield, at her behest. She is a vegetarian and she loves their veggie burgers. Although they were not as good as she last remembered, it is still one of her favorite restaurants in metro Detroit.

Have you ever dined at one restaurant and had a great experience: food, service, etc., but then when you go to the same restaurant but a different chain the food is horrible and the service is questionable? That really shows you it's the people that make a restaurant good, not the name. Formulaic chains like Macaroni Grill can even get it wrong, even though all they do is take stuff from a bag.

I had the calamari and a Caesar salad at Sweet Lorraine's. I personally like my food to be savory instead of sweet so my opinion might be biased. The batter that was used to fry the calamari was too sweet and all the dipping sauces were sweet. It was asian inspired, but I have seen it done better.

The Caesar salad had wilted lettuce and too much dressing for my taste. Once you have had something done right it's hard to go back. And why is it that whenever I order a Caesar salad they think they can give you the worse lettuce and dump a bunch of caesar dressing all over it like you won't notice. I notice :-)

The high note is the server was attentive and nice. Like too many waiters in Detroit, they don't believe the worse you treat the customer the better your tip will be. The reverse psychology does work, but I would prefer the waitstaff to just spit in my food then be rude to my face. I don't know, call me old fashioned.