Port Perry is only about a 40 minute drive from Ajax. It's a pretty little town on Lake Scugog, with a Main Street that bustles with little shops, boutiques, and a few small restaurants and cafés.
Hubby and I took my grandmother up there today to do a little Holiday shopping; the perfect spot in my opinion, verified by Santa Claus with his bell in the corner Ho-Ho-Ho-ing all the shoppers as they scurried from store to store, their arms laden with packages and parcels.
After a few stores, it was determined that our intrepid little group needed to refuel, and chose a small restaurant called The Front Porch.
The Good Points
Service. Extremely friendly. Exactly what you would expect from a small town establishment. We were greeted by the owner who also took our orders and served our food. Big points in my book when the owner is so involved.
The seating. Quaint, comfortable, lots of room between tables.
The rice pudding! Pretty sure that was homemade, lovely flavour and texture, not too sweet, and served with the right amount of cinnamon.
The Not-So-Good Points
The food wasn't great. My grandmother and I had the cream of mushroom soup, and Hubby had the beef barley soup, all of which purported to be homemade. The beef with barley soup didn't taste bad, it just didn't taste like much. The cream of mushroom was better, but not terribly mushroom flavoured, and I am not certain whether the homemade claim was entirely truthful.
We also ordered a plate of garlic bread with cheese for the table. This was not as good as the soup. Nice idea use different kinds of brown bread, not ok to use leftover bread so stale that it had to be at least three days old. Also not ok to use thin bread from sandwiches. It really doesn't translate into garlic bread very well.
The decor. Big bright space with beautiful high ceilings, but tacky spring green paint on dingy white walls with trite sayings painted on them definitely left something to be desired.
The Bad Points
Part of the kitchen was visible to the restaurant; not necessarily a bad thing, but when it's the part of the kitchen where you can watch them microwave your food, it's always a bad thing.
The bathrooms were down a hall in between the microwave kitchen and the rest of the kitchen, and nothing looked like it was well taken care of.
The coffee was just bad. Watery, bitter, and left you with that horrible coffee-tummy feeling an hour later.
The plating. Again, our 11 year old could have done better. They were trying to be quaint by serving their soups in various soup bowls, but they were the ones you could have picked up at a garage sale four for a dollar. Not something I would serve soup in to guests in my home, so certainly not acceptable for a restaurant. Soup spilled down the sides, no effort to clean it up. Just no care or pride in what they were serving.
Are We Going Back?
Maybe. It wasn't awful; there was nothing really terrible, and my grandmother really enjoyed it which was the whole point to the day as Hubby and I were concerned. If she wants to go back there, we will be going. But if Hubby and I go back there by ourselves, we will be sampling the cuisine of a different establishment.
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