The WIndjammer Review

      For our office Christmas party, we went to the Windjammer. Arguably, one of the longest lasting restaurants in the Burlington area. The Windjammer has long been known for its salad bar and beef offerings. And as I quickly noticed a giant menu (unfortunately, you all know what I think of giant menus).

      As you are led to your table, you quickly notice how HUGE this place is, then you notice how many people are also dining on this Wednesday, (2 weeks before Xmas), night. Between the size of the menu and the amount of people, you just know the kitchen is going to be crazy and crazy isn't always good . We sit down and are given our menus and it is huge, they have just about every type of seafood or cut of beef you can imagine. The wine list is also quite large, if rather pedestrian, with alot of "grocery store" wines on it. BUT I will give the kudos for the beer offerings. lots of local brews and some of the harder to get ones. I finally got to try the Trapp Family lager and it was really good.

      Now, I must tell you about another personal quibble, I hate salad bars. Please don't write me angry letters, its a personal thing but even with every sneeze guard in place, I just don't think their sanitary.Who knows where the 300 people in front of you hands have been? Anyways, the Windjammer is famous for theirs and I am sure that's not gonna change anytime soon, and as it comes with your meal , we all trudged off to the salad bar to indulge. The offerings are substantial but not really innovative and again I am not a fan. So for my entree, I went with ;

Chicken Rotolo- tenderized 8 oz. chicken breast with housemade VT chevre boursin, baby spinach & lump crab meat, pita encrusted and rolled, finished with sweet pepper Arrosto $22.99

        I went with this because it sounded different from their usual meat and rather plain seafood items. Looking back now that was a mistake, if a restaurant is known for something, that is what you should probably order. The biggest problem with this meal and from what I could see around the table is everything was overcooked. I think because of the large volume of orders they do in a night, everything goes under an extremely hot salamander and cooks it to within an inch of its life. Now in their defense, no one at the table had steak, (weird, huh), so I can not comment on overdone steaks, just seafood and chicken. For dessert we shared three things across the table, and they were so memorable I can not remember even one of them. Something chocolate, something berry , none really bad, none really great. And THAT in a nutshell is my memory of the Windjammer. Nothing great, nothing really bad, just unmemorable food, prepared hundreds of times a night.

On a scale of 1 to 5;
Food,                Quality means much more to us than quantity.
Beer and Wine,  Based on selection and pricing

Service,             Speaks for itself
Ambiance,          Does the look fit the food and pricing

 Price,                And finally does the pricing equal the results we had.

Food,                     3.0  Not bad, not great, reliable in a box restaurant kind of way.
Beer and Wine,    3.5  Nice beer and wine selections, wine list is huge but rather boring.
Service,                 3.0  Rushed and not very informative but friendly just the same, like everything else not memorable.

Ambiance,             2.5  Huge and loud come to mind.
Price,                     3.0  Pricey, but not overly so. Portion tend to be very large

Overall                  3.00 If you love the box restaurants at Taft's Corner , you will love the Windjammer. BUT come here instead so the money stays local. Nothing really great but then again nothing really bad, dependable seems to be the correct word. And sometimes dependable works just fine.