106368 Wed Jul 12 21:53:35 -0700 2000 3 24 Canada 0 576750 My family and I used to go to Messis Restaurant at least twice a year. Tonight,we had dinner there for the first time in a year. Let me tell you,the food was utterly horrid!!! The service was dreadful,and the menu so pretencious!!! I had a salad-portobello mushroom-with goat cheese,and eggplant-grilled-it tasted quite strange. There was a spice in it that I disliked very strongly. As for the main dish-Fusilli with tomato sauce and shrimp and tuna=I hated it!!!!!!!! The tuna was grilled,and they skimped on the shrimp!! Too mkany read/yellow peppers!!!! There was that same spice in the food that destroyed the taste for me. They used to have such a good chef there!!! Now,the chef either has been changed,or he's lost his touch!!! Even the coffee was bad-tasted like mud!!! The place is a RIPOFF!!! Anyone who goes there-BEWARE!!!!! Wed Jul 12 21:53:35 -0700 2000 0 Marc Bernstein 1 576764 Some further thoughts about Messis restaurant. That night that my family went to dinner,the cooking was such a profound misfire,that I wondered if I had entered fifth rate clone of a once truly unique dining experience! The cuisine showed no trace of it's former glory! For $150.00 for 6 people,everything on the menu sounded quite pretentious,and much too Hedda Hopperish. In fact,it might have appealed to that fictional character on "Gilligan's Island","Thurston Howell The Third"!! The coffee was an insult to the memory of Oscar Levant!! The dish that I ordered,Shrimp(I'm sorry,I meant to say:"SHEMP!!!") with penne pasta,tuna,and tomato sauce,had a nasty-tasting spice that burned my throat! Besides,not only did the chef skimp on the shrimp,(there were only two) the tuna was roasted and then grilled,and it was overcooked on the outside,and raw on the inside!! The penne was gummy tasting and also stale! The tomato sauce was full of far too many red and green peppers,and of the rest of the so-called vegetables-the carrots were inedible,(No,the carrots were not "Bugs Bunny food!!!!") Too Many Onions! I think that the chef used so many spices,that they ruined the dinners!! I can only recall a few of them:cloves,oregano,garlic. The eggplant and portobello mushrooms were only average,but they too might have been first class,if the chef hadn't let them drown in a vat of olive oil and rancid garlic!!! The eggplant was overcooked and really greasy! The goats cheese tasted "Bah"!! My final comment:"BAH HUMBUG!!!" Oh,one more thing:If you enter Messis,let the gourmet beware!! Or,to paraphrase Bela Lugosi,"Messis,You Have Booped Your Last Boop!!!" Wed Jul 26 00:57:51 -0700 2000 576750 0 Marc Bernstein 2 577612 Existe t il vraiment!!! Thu Jan 10 08:05:44 -0800 2002 576764 0 MESSIS Sam 3 577640 I have not been to Messis in a long time. It is a pity about the decline in quality of the food,since at one time it was wonderful. Whether the chef has gone a different route,or changed,the food,while very interesting and quite ambitious,doesn't always work out too well. My last experiences at Messis were something of a misfire,or misadventure. The soups tend to be rather heavy-handed. The salads are ok. The main dishes try very hard,but either end up as overkill,or have too heavy a hand-spice-wise. It is difficult to pin what has gone wrong at Messis. Somewhere in the preparation,or cooking,things go sadly off-balance. Thu Jan 17 21:26:03 -0800 2002 577612 0 Professor Wolfgang Von Mozart