NEWSLETTER

ileen "Trixie" Sobieck celebrated her own birth on Saturday by surrounding herself with friends and relatives for a casual birthday dinner at the Seymour Hotel located in midtown Seymour. Sobieck who was 51 on Saturday did not give any prepared speech at the event and kept the gathering informal with guests donned in casual attire.

Those attending were by far mostly related to Sobieck but several close friends and former co-workers attended the event as well, rounding out the group both by gender and race. Sobieck found herself showered by small gifts of one type or another or cards with money stuffed inside by attendees.

Before hand Sobieck had carefully selected a venue by reputation and accessibility arriving at The Hotel Seymour as her choice for her special day. Chatter around the community of Hobart was somewhat favorable toward the establishment self described as a supper club, however from this reporters perspective this claim is false advertising. Supper club is a term used that usually describes a facility where one is served a traditional multi course meal under comfortable conditions and atmosphere. This facility had none of the above.

The Hotel had been known in the past to be superb in it's offering of fish plates on Friday nights and offered an adequate menu other nights of the week. The business knew how to handle hungry people and took care of business. The former owners never upgraded the bar and it's quaint style was reminiscent of the art deco of years past even sporting a hand painted mural on the wall on the back side of the bar.

New owners have different ideas some good and some bad. These owners decided to spend money updating the bar, adding copper ceiling tiles and oak wall panels and casings giving the bar a fresh clean look while still preserving the hand painted mural, but increasing the echo and noise level to an unacceptable level.

The size of the main bar seemed inadequate to the new owners so they added a new bar in the "lounge area" which had been part of the dining room previously. Now no one is ever without a drink, however processing the hungry customers slowed.

Our party had a dinner reservation for 7 PM and they were a bit late in giving us a table, around a half an hour give or take. I get it, it's busy, times are hard to coordinate, I'm OK with that. What I'm not OK with is ordering a pricey meal then being told to stand in line like cattle to get a salad. The old hotel brought out your salad to your table and you were not interrupted or had to snake back and forth fighting your way through tables placed too closely together because former dining areas had now been converted to lounge. After two aborted attempts at getting a salad I finally decided along with another dining at our table to bite the bullet and stay in line as long as it took to get a salad. After 10 minutes in line and no movement we were told our entree had arrived and we should probably come back, alas we were saladless and remained so for the remainder. The baby back ribs I had ordered were plentiful however were not aforementioned baby back variety, instead they were large bones that looked like human ribs. The American fries were tasty though. I ate what I could and left the remaining ribs for the hotel dog.

After one more drink at the auxiliary bar we departed, most likely never to return again. I must add that the Sobieck's could have in no way known how poor this so called supper club is run and in no way could they be held responsible for it's outrageous service.

INDIAN TACO NIGHT MOVED TO NEW DATE

The announcement that Kat's Indian Taco Night would be held March 9 is now invalid according to the Kat after collaborating with FC attendees on Saturday. The new date selected for the random non annual event is March 16th.

The change came after Joanne Lade expressed disappointment at the first date set because of her