In my last blog, I wrote about how we went to Rainbow Springs and this is still part of that day.
After we went to Rainbow Springs, we weren’t quite ready to go home yet so went to Ozello. Ozello isn’t really a beach but it does have gulf access. I loved the “Road Ends Here” sign 😂 The drive to get there was really pretty. Tons of curvy roads that would be fun to take in a slingshot or something. If you get car sick easily I don’t know that I would recommend the drive, because it is tons of curves. It is a really pretty drive if that doesn’t bother you though.
When James (my fiance) lived in Florida before he said that on the way to Ozello there was a place that had the best pulled pork sandwich he had ever had so we were hoping to try one, but the place was shut down. Not sure if it was shut down permanently or from COVID though and maybe even by now is reopened. There were a couple of other restaurants along the way that we might check out someday when we have a little more time. We had left our poodle,Leia, at home since she couldn’t swim at the springs, so we didn’t want to be gone too long.
There were several boats at the water access in Ozello and I have since read somewhere that they do a lot of scalloping at that location so that might be something I check out. We really want to go do one of the manatee tours when they come to Crystal River too. There really is quite a bit to do in the area and we want to take full advantage!
So while we definitely will go back to Ozello, we will never go back to the steak sub place we ate at in Crystal River. I normally don’t like to publicize such bad experiences because everyone has a bad day and I get that. However, this was more than that AND the owner got kind of hateful with what I thought was a fair and honest review on Google which I have since changed to add the disregard for Covid restrictions which I had originally left out. I am just sharing our experience without embellishments.
We were really hungry and instead of just going through McDonalds or something we wanted to support a local business so we decided to patronize a small sub place that advertised cheesesteak sandwiches. When we walked in, there were two people in one party ahead of us ordering.
We ordered a cheese steak sub, a cuban sandwich, a small order of onion rings and one small fountain drink. The onion rings and fountain drink were part of a meal “special” and we rarely get onion rings anywhere so we thought we would give them a try.
45 minutes later, we got our food. Let me repeat that because it seems unbelievable to me too….45 minutes later we got our food. Our two sandwiches and onion rings took 45 minutes with only 2 people ahead of us when we entered the restaurant. Ok, so not the end of the world. Good things are worth waiting for after all. This was not one of those times, however. My Cuban was barely edible, the meat was tough and dry and it was over stuffed with it. It was pressed on a panini press which also isn’t the end of the world but since the rest of it sucked so bad I wanted to mention it. James’ cheese steak (which this restaurant claims to specialize in) wasn’t good at all. The meat was so tough and rubbery it was hard to eat, and unpleasant to eat as well. They put lettuce and tomato on the cheese steak in kind of an odd fashion since most of it immediately fell out when you picked up the sandwich making it even harder to eat. Not the end of the world but for almost $30 for this small meal, we weren’t thrilled with the outcome.
Besides the food being bad and over priced, we absolutely did not feel safe there. At the time in Florida there were still strict COVID protocols and within 10 minutes of us being there the restaurant had filled up and there were no more empty tables. Instead of having people wait outside like they were supposed to, the waitress/cashier just started asking people (who weren’t even in the same party!) to sit together. Ummmm….that’s just not okay in my book. I didn’t mention this in my original Google review of the place because I was trying to be nice but they did knowingly go over capacity and endanger their customers and they did not seem to care. I absolutely hate writing bad things about people and places. But I do want people to have honest reviews of my experiences and if I didn’t have a nice experience I can’t really sugar coat that. The onion rings were thankfully ok but the service, quality, and just the entire experience was bad.
Originally I was going to have the name of this place in here but I decided to keep that information to myself. I don’t really even like having nothing really good to say about the experience but if you are in Crystal River and want to make sure you avoid it, just stay away from eating at sandwich shops in shopping plazas! 😉
As bad as the sub place was, it still didn’t take away that I got to see some beautiful things in some beautiful places with a beautiful person. Really though, even if it did ruin our appetite like Jerry Seinfeld says, another one is always coming along. 😂
If you follow me on Instagram you know that I finally got to go to Disneyworld last week! It was really exciting and if you go check out any of my posts make sure to mention you found me here!
Well that’s it for today! I really need to get to work today (I own an ebay store if you want to check it out) Make sure to follow me so you can see when I publish another blog and thank you for reading.