"I 've made a couple of efforts to eat at Golden Road prior to my recent experience, without any success. They get EXTREMELY busy and they *DO NOT* do reservations. However, upon speaking to the hostess, she advised that a same day visit could be submitted to their website to hold a table but it is only available for a same day visit. On being seated, my boyfriend is on crutches and the server was weaving us in-between tables of seated diners with literally no room for my boyfriend to get through. I had to stop the server to ask for an alternative route to the table. I know this may sound like I 'm knit picking but I feel like it 's common sense to seat your disabled customers and not guide them through a labyrinth of tables, other customers, dogs and servers, putting the customer at risk to injure themselves. We were seated outside in what looks like a 1960s beach party....in a litter box. There were dogs and kids running around everywhere and that made it difficult to hold a conversation. A little boy ran up to our server, threw his arms around our server 's leg and clung tightly and I thought to myself that is why we can 't have nice things. Moving on, our server asked for our drink order, being sober, we had water. The water is self service and I liked that I didn 't have to wait for a refill. There are several large Igloo coolers peppered around the restaurant that people gather and hang around at to chat. There are clear plastic cups littered everywhere, it didn 't seem to be a priority to keep the water filled, cups stocked or to discard the used cups. We don 't drink and other than beer, their beverage selection is minimal and poor. The really cool thing about Golden Road is that the menu has quite a few vegan or items that could be modified vegan. Our server didn 't give us any help with ordering and was not very helpful. We ended up ordering the Impossible burger, fried avocado tacos, mac cheese and the beet carpaccio salad. We didn 't have to wait long for our food, which was both surprising and nice! Unfortunately, this is where everything kind of fell apart for me here. The impossible burger had a house-made bun and came with a generous amount of shoestring fries. The cheese on the burger was a shredded cheese and wasn 't good. The burger itself looks suspiciously like a conventional burger with the inside of it pink from being prepared medium rare. I never thought I 'd have to use that phrase again. So weird. The burger patty itself was flavorless. I don 't mean bland. I literally mean without ANY flavor whatsoever. Edible but a boring waste of calories. The fried avocado tacos were OK. The avocados were fresh but again, lacking flavor. The mac cheese, is in quotes because it was nothing anywhere near resembling mac cheese AT ALL. It was penne pasta tossed with a roasted red pepper oil. This had a little smokey flavor but was NOTHING like mac cheese. The server didn 't tell us that the vegan modification for this dish made it nothing like what anyone would expect. It was really disappointing. The beet carpaccio salad was actually really good. The chef left off the vegan ricotta cheese and the server had to bring me a separate dish of it. The salad was rich, flavorful and overall, the best item we tried. It was pricey for the size but would be the only thing I would go back and order again. Upon completion of the meal, our server explained the menu discrepancies and advised us that the production of their food has changed and not for the better. Apparently, the impossible burger is made from a burger mix. I suggested that they add some spices because the mix is bland. He laughed and agreed. At best, the food is pushing mediocre but has the potential to be great, however, they 'd need a more adventurous executive chef that isn 't afraid of flavor."
