Exclusive Olympia Club Serves Only Disappointment

Olympia Club Review:

Olympia Club

It was a night of Red Wing first for me and friends, when we found ourselves privileged enough to be dining in the Olympia Club.

The Olympia Club is an exclusive restaurant in the Joe Louis Arena where only season ticket holders are allowed to dine.

My boyfriend happened to score a pass to this exclusive restaurant by winning an auction through work.

When we arrived we entered a rather dim room filled with Wings fans sporting their red and white jerseys.

We were quickly seated and the waitress took our drink order. She gave us a wrist band and explained we were allowed to go through the buffet as many times as we wanted.

Just as soon as she left the table we made our way to the luscious buffet lines. We loaded our plates up with the options of salad, tomato and green beans, tortellini, potatoes, chicken parmesan, and tempura shrimp. There was also a meat station where a butcher was slicing pork tenderloin and a slider station where they were grilling up burgers.

We got back to the table I was surprised to find that my drink hadn’t beaten me there. After we began eating the waitress returned with our drinks. After a few sips of my “captain and coke” I realized that Jack Daniels had made his way into my drink instead of Captain Morgan.

If the waitress would have returned, I would have brought this to her attention. But she seemed lost in the sea of people that were there.

Everything on my plate was cold- the green beans, the potatoes, the tortellini, and the shrimp. I didn’t want to ruin our evening by making a scene so I tried not to complain. I later asked my boyfriend if his food was cold too because he went through a different buffet line. As it turns out the warmest thing he had was his grilled on the spot slider.

With only 15 minutes left before the game started, we returned to the buffet to get desserts. Just as we finished our desserts and the last of our drinks, our waitress returns to ask if we want a round to go up. We took her up on this, but I made sure to tell her I was hoping for “captain and coke” instead of “jack and coke” this time.

Olympia Club

She returned with our new round of drinks, along with the bill, much quicker than the first time.

When we all saw the bill for the first time, we were all pretty speechless. Somehow, the four of us racked up an obnoxious $200 bill. Ironically, the most decent priced thing on the bill was actually our drinks.

The buffet came out to be about $30 per person. None of us even ate $30 worth of food and the quality of the food was certainly not worth the $30. The only thing more ridiculous than the price of a $10 at best buffet, was the unannounced 15% food service charge and the 18% beverage service charge. Oh, and don’t forget the $10 in tax.

If a restaurant is going to charge about $40 dollars per person to eat, the least they can do is serve warm food.

On a personal note, I am assuming that there probably haven’t been many complaints about the quality of food because the people that dine there clearly have no sense in taste.

The experience we had there was certainly not worth the money we wasted and I am still wondering what makes the Olympia Club so exclusive. But I bet that will be the last time we make the mistake of going there again, unless we are eating with the Red Wing’s themselves.