Goodfellas, the original review

pizza problems

An anonymous reader, I will call them Deep Throat Pan, left this nugget of blog gold as a comment on this post. It is the original Irish News review of Goodfellas by Caroline Workman. The review that ended up in court, three times. Judge for yourselves. I have no problem with it as it reviews the food. You'd think that would be a given with a restaurant review but not so......

more here
here
and here (maybe the end?)

ORIGINAL IRISH NEWS ARTICLE

26th August 2000
Irish news article by Dining Partners
May Sheridan & Frances Harper

Not good, fellas

West Belfast boasts very few restaurants. Perhaps it’s for this reason that Goodfellas has made such a name for itself, and continues to do so well. Cars lined Kennedy Way outside the restaurant, and it was so packed that people were forming an orderly queue at the door when we visited on a week night. From a customers point of view Goodfellas is a bit daunting.
Brown tinted glass prevents you from seeing inside the restaurant and a caged CCTV camera records your arrival a la Big Brother.
The numerous ‘Cead Mile Failte’ signs ring a little false when you’re asked whether or not you’ve told the receptionist you want a table, and could you make sure that you’re not standing in the way of the waitresses.
We did as we were told – lucky to get a table at all, given the extensive list of reservations well into the night. It wasn’t long before we were led through to our ‘non-smoking’ table in full view of the pizza ovens.
Our waitress brought us menus and offered us a drink. Goodfellas isn’t licensed but you can buy alcohol from the adjoining pub.
We were happy to order a cola – until it arrived. Flat, warm and watery, you can be sure it was on tap. Blue plumes of smoke from the numerous cigarettes at the smoking tables rendered the idea of a separate section a bit of a farce.
We were convinced that we were sitting under the exit for a ventilation pipe until we realised where the smoke was coming from. It’s scary how much people still chain-smoke. This restaurant would have no trade in the States.
The menu is exhaustive. Goodfellas, as you might imagine serves pizza (approximately 10 varieties), but it also offers 10 starters, 10 pasta dishes, 10 chicken dishes, 10 steak dishes, 5 pork dishes, 5 fish dishes and bizarrely, 10 Mexican dishes.
With ‘make your own’ pizza and pasta sections, and side orders, that adds up to over 80 choices.
There’s a school of thought that claims the larger the choice, the better the restaurant. Actually it makes it impossible to use fresh food unless you’re prepared to spend a lot of money on staff.
The multitude of misspellings and completely new Italian words or dishes undermines the strength of the ‘Irish-Italian’ connection boasted by Goodfellas but we put our faith in the sheer volume of customers showing their support, and ordered our food with a degree of confidence.
Our starters arrived disconcertingly quickly – chicken liver pâté, deep fried Calamari (squid), and prawns in a creamy white wine sauce.
At first sight these dishes seemed fine, although the obligatory tomato, cucumber, and shredded lettuce garnish was swimming along with the prawns in the bowl of sauce.
However, after one ring of squid, a mouthful of prawns and a taste of the pâté, it became clear that these dishes were made with the cheapest ingredients on the market.
You get what you pay for these days, although Goodfellas doesn’t pass on any savings to its customers.
At £3.55 for squid (overcharged at £4.25), I did not expect reconstituted fish meat.
The translucent grey rings cannot have been real squid and the hard batter coating and bottled Thousand Island dressing did little to make them more appetising.
Our main courses arrived in as much time as it took the chefs in view to rip open three blue industrial-sized bags of processed cheese, which is actually no time at all.
Goodfellas not only does a roaring sit in trade bit it must also have captured the lion’s share of the home-delivery pizza market in this part of town.
Pizza seems to be what Goodfellas does best.
Indeed this is what most people in the restaurant seemed to be eating. When our main courses arrived we quickly understood why.
My chicken marsala (£8.55) was inedible. The meat itself looked fine, but it was coated in a sickly saccharine sauce that clashed horribly with the savoury food.
Our waitress had warned me that it was sweet, so it probably wasn’t the first time that this dish had been a problem with customers. It’s hard to know why it‘s still on the menu.
The spaghetti dish with seafood and tomato sauce (£7.55) was only marginally more appealing if you could face the Desperate Dan sized portion of heaped overcooked pasta.
The sloppy sauce had generous quantities of dodgy looking seafood.
Even the pizza (£7.95) was a let down, covered with nasty processed salami.
We didn’t witness any theatrical tossing of dough, so it’s possible that frozen pizza rounds are brought in.
Side orders of chips were pale, greasy and undercooked, and the vegetables were unmistakably fresh from the freezer – we weren’t charged for these.
At a very superficial level Goodfellas seems keen to give customers a warm Irish welcome, but the restaurant has a joyless atmosphere and the staff have no more time to be involved with their customers than those in a motorway café.
Service is mercifully quick and staff did notice that we had left most of the food on our plates, but there was little attempt to understand why, and we were then overcharged.
It’s doubtful that things will change until Goodfellas has more competition or until the owners learn that a wide choice and heaped portions are not a measure of quality. Having had a taster, we won’t be back for more. As it says above reception “Customers required – no previous experience necessary”.

Think I'll just have some Chinese food tonight........