Beaver Choice

Beaver Choice

745 W Baseline Rd

Mesa, AZ 85210

Five of us along with a three year old visited the restaurant on a Thursday night to take advantage of the all you can eat pierogi offer. Having written reviews for many years, this restaurant presented me with a number of dilemmas in evaluating it.

The food represents a number of disparate countries including Germany, Sweden, Poland and Canada. While the food was tasty, the choices on the menu often led to confusion in ordering, with customers wanting to change around a lot of dishes to suit their tastes. Fortunately, we had an excellent waitress who did her best to keep everyone happy.

I ordered the all you can eat Pierogis, which comes with soup and salad. The salad is in a bowl on a table at the end of the room, and is quite ordinary. The dressing is in two squirt bottles that sit in a bowl of ice. The dressing is quite tasty, but the seasonings in it blocked the spout, and then suddenly shot out of the bottle drenching the salad.

Next, was the soup. It was kept in an electric kettle with a broken lid. The soup was a traditional European style borscht which had a chicken broth base, cabbage and thick sliced beets. It was an excellent soup, though I would have preferred that the beets were cut up a lot smaller and thinner.

What should have been the high point of my dinner was a bunch of gummy, thick dough pierogi’s in a selection of only 4 types. When I inquired about the selection since they advertise all you can eat, I was told that they only put out 4 types because they can’t keep up with the demand. In the hour and a half that I was there, I never once observed the pans of pierogi’s get low enough that they had to be refilled.

Companion had the Skomakarlada (Swedish Shoebox) which had a nice gravy and several nice medallions but which was buried under a huge mass of mashed potatoes. Companion had asked them to put some extra mushrooms on the plate, and was charged $1.75 for the mushrooms that none of us could find.

Another companion had the Hunter Schnitzel, which was a nice sized portion and came with two salads and a huge portion of mashed potatoes with gravy. A heavy plate to say the least.

One of our companions was a vegetarian and wanted the pierogi special, but was unable to eat the soup portion owing to its base of chicken broth.

The high point of the meal was the desserts. I had the Lingonberry Ice Cream which was excellent and the best part of my meal. A number of others in our party ordered the same thing after they saw mine. Companion had the Lemon Fluff, which was a beautifully done and excellent tasting meringue.

The bill was presented and I gave my Amex card. Their web site says that they accept it. I was asked by our waitress to use a different card because Amex charges them 1% more than the other cards. When I refused, they told me they would charge me 5% more on the bill to cover my using Amex. This is the height of being cheap! Never in all my days reviewing restaurants have I ever been subjected to something like this. I have had places say that they don’t accept Amex, and that is their privilege, but to add on a charge that isn’t even close to what they get charged smacks of a place that is worried about every little dime and is worried about possibly closing.

I cannot in all honesty give this restaurant the rating that it should deserve. The food was very good, and the service was adequate, but the place was more than half empty, poorly decorated, and did not want to take a credit card that they clearly accept.

2 stars for quality of food and service.