Jillians

If you want to eat overpriced food in a cacophony of lights and sound, then you need to drive to Nashville and visit Jillians Amazing Games Room. Our guests took a voluntary bump from their flight home Saturday morning, so we had time on our hands and decided to waste some at Opry Mills. When it was time for lunch, we chose Jillians. I wish someone had bumped us from this experience. Jillians is a huge complex with a room of video games, called the Amazing Games Room, an eight-lane bowling alley, a poolroom, three restaurants and a number of lounges. They also have a restaurant called Hibachi Grill that only opens for dinner. Since we had been up since 6 a.m., our lunch-munchy pangs arrived about 11. A line was already forming at the restaurant called the Video Caf. This restaurant features two walls of big-screen televisions and every sporting event being broadcast at that time shown on at least one, but often dozens, of the screens. Not wanting to stand in line, we decided to eat in the Amazing Games Room, where there was no waiting. This should have been our first clue. The Amazing Games Room is a giant room filled with video games of every description. You can pretend you are the pilot of a jetliner, race a semi truck from New York to Key West, video bowl down the streets of San Francisco, play air hockey and skee ball for stuffed animals. You get the idea. This place is a money pit for teenagers. Right in the middle of the Amazing Games Room is a bar surrounded by booths all were empty. This should have been our second clue. We thought we were just lucky and felt pretty smug because we didnt have to wait in line like the others. Our waiter finally moseyed over to our booth to offer us menus. He brought our drinks and took our order. Cuban sandwich, white bean chili with a Swiss cheeseburger, Caesars salad, and grilled chicken sandwich with Swiss cheese. We didnt have high expectations for food nor should we have had. After a long wait, the waiter dropped by our table to casually mention that the sandwiches were done, he was just waiting on the chili. We all glanced at each other and I suggested that it might be wise to serve the food that was prepared and bring the chili when it was done. He looked at me like I was a genius. A few minutes later, all the food arrived at once. He warned us that our plates were hot and even mentioned the bowl containing the chili was hot. The bowl may have been hot, but the chili wasnt not even close. So it was sent back to be reheated. The Swiss cheeseburger wasnt overly warm either. But it made all made perfect sense. Obviously our food had been sitting under a warming lamp while the chili was being microwaved. The Caesars salad was blah. The romaine lettuce wasnt crisp, garlic flavor was missing and the Parmesan cheese looked like it came right out of a bag already shredded. It was like eating a salad in a video arcade. (Gasp! We WERE in a video arcade!)The grilled chicken sandwich was as dry as dust, and the fries were cold. However, the one bright spot (even compared to the garish lights of the video games) was the Ybor City Cuban sandwich. The blurb on the menu said it was an authentic Cuban sandwich in the Ybor City style. Ybor City is a neighborhood in Tampa that features authentic Hispanic and Cuban cuisine. Jillians Cuban was very good. A Cuban sandwich is served in long sandwich rolls that have been toasted on one side in a sandwich press to flatten the rolls. The meat is thinly sliced ham, pulled pork and thinly sliced salami. Its dressed with mayonnaise and mustard. The only disappointment was the use of yellow mustard instead of hot spicy mustard. Swiss cheese and chipotle peppers add to the sandwichs appeal. Jillians is a fun place to visit, I just wish we would had spent our food money on game tokens it would have been more satisfying. The reviewer is employed at the Daily News. He/she pays for his/her meals and his/her gym fees to maintain his/her figure. New restaurants are given an eight-week grace period before being reviewed. To comment, contact managing editor Mike Alexieff at 783-3235.