Pier West - Twin Lakes, WI

We stumbled across this restaurant because we just discovered www.restaurant.com. This is where you can purchase discount certificates for many retaurants for a reduced price. For example, we purchased a $25 certificate for $2. The only restriction is that we had to spend $50 total. That is never hard for us to do.

You can search by restaurants in your area and that's how we found Pier West. We were excited - something new to try and it's open on Monday. It's located on Lake Mary, which is small, but it was still a good view.

We were seated right away and offered drinks by the person who sat us. A great start! When she came back with our drinks, we were not quite ready to order, so she said she would return. We kept seeing her waiting on people who were seated outside on the deck, people who came after us. We got to the point where we finished our glass of wine and she still had not come back. Literally it was 20 minutes. Finally we grabbed another server and she apologized, said she didn't know that she was supposed to take care of us. She took our order right away.

We ordered an appetizer, salad and entrees. She brought our salads out first. I hate that! And it happens more and more often. I don't get it. There are supposed to be rules to follow. Appetizers should come first!

We ordered the Seafood Feta Bruschetta, which was shrimp, scallops, lobster (don't really remember seeing the lobster) sauteed with garlic, feta cheese, olive oil, tomatoes and white wine served with french bread. We expected it to come on the bread, like bruschetta normally does, but we had to make our own. No big deal. It tasted great and at least it was more creative than the norm.

For our main course, I ordered the grilled shrimp and my husband ordered the grilled scallops. I'm not sure you can do much to screw up grilled shrimp, so it was as I expected. However, my husbands scallops seemed very bizarre. They were the whitest looking scallops I'd ever seen. They looked boiled rather than grilled. Very unappealing.

We both had the roasted sweet potato which was ok.

I doubt we will ever return.

www.pierwest.net

Frank's Diner: Kenosha, WI (Breakfast)

Since we had just had dinner at Frank's just a couple nights before, we felt compelled to have their famous breakfast.

We arrived just before 9:00 AM and I was astounded how different the restaurant looks in the light of day. It really looks like an old dining car.

The restaurant was full. All the tables in the back and most of the counter had customers at them. We had three people in our party, so we wanted to wait for a table. If you sit at the counter, you have all of the people waiting to get seated standing behind you, which I would find annoying.

The entire restaurant is very crowded and you are constantly moving around to let someone through. Don't let this deter you from going, the wait staff keep you so entertained you could care less about the crowded environment.

Two of us had simple eggs over easy with bacon and toast and the third member of our party had cinnamon swirl french toast. He said it was like eating Banana's Foster for breakfast.

Our recomendation is: you've got to try this restaurant, it is worth the drive and the wait.

http://www.franksdinerkenosha.com/index.html