Lou Henri's

During a nice little visit to Iowa City in which we stopped at the Farmer's Market and the ped mall, we met up with my sister and her bf for a late lunch. She decided to bring us to a diner called Lou Henri's. The experience was...interesting and led to us renaming the diner Poo Henri's.

My sister had good things to say about it and what I've read on the internet leads me to believe it was an "off day." An incredibly "off day."













The decor is pretty awful and random, like eating at your poor crazy aunt's house.













Nonetheless, I was hopeful because the menu was pretty unique. Mostly breakfast foods, but at least they put some thought into the dishes instead of having the typical you choose the egg, meat, bread etc. (Click the picture to enlarge)













I went with the Eggs Jackson with a fruit cup. Not sure why it's called Eggs Jackson, but I kept picturing Andrew Jackson, which should have tipped me off. It was a poached egg on ham and an english muffin. Richie chose the Huevos Diablos. That's devil eggs for you gringos. Scrambled eggs on sausage patties, covered with salsa and onions. Kaitlin got a club sandwich and Kurt got an omelet.

Well the worst part of the experience was waiting for our food. The place was no where near busy, it was about 1 p.m. when we arrived, so the lunch crowd was clearing out. I downed my diet Coke in about 2 minutes and waited a half hour for my refill. We still hadn't gotten our food, so we waited and I nibbled on a scotcheroo stowed in my purse. After being there for 55 minutes and seeing our waitress once, we decided to give it another 10 minutes, and then we would leave.

Well the food came out about 8 minutes later, so the four of us quickly shoved the food into our mouths. Maybe the long wait had tampered with our taste buds, but none of us were impressed. The potatoes were very greasy and burnt, my sister's potato chips were inedible, Kurt's omelet was missing cheese, and Richie will eat anything, so whatever. He ate this...













And he ended up eating most of my food even though the toast was hard and my english muffin was rubbery. Hunger will make you do strange things.













The fruit cup was the best part, but even that didn't taste very fresh. It took an hour to make, so I expected some fresh off the tree taste, but no dice.

We finally left around 2:20 and were in such a rush, we didn't bother to make a stink about paying full price. However, the waitress got zilch and, judging by her lack of eye contact, I'm pretty sure she knew it.

not recommended.