While I have been to Stooley's before, it was close to 15 years ago, so I don't remember much about my visit and I was keen to go again. Established in 1985, Stooley's is described on their own website (found here) as "not just a restaurant, but a way of life". Boasting that "you're at home when you're at Stooley's", the website gives you a brief history of the establishment of the restaurant as well as a list of all of their menu options. A quick look at the website or stop in to the restaurant, and you know that this isn't a "classy joint", but I don't think that that's what the operators are going for, anyway. Caricatures of 3 men (Groucho Marx being one of them...?) adorn not only the pages of the menu, but also the wall inside. Also included in the decor are a good number of paintings and pictures that are alcohol themed - including a VERY large painting of a... *ahem*... "well-endowed" woman in a very short skirt serving beer to some very happy military men. The tables are simple wood-tops, and the booths, while having somewhat of an artistic element on the backs, are a little "squishy" - especially with winter coats in tow. 
The menu itself is actually quite huge. Appetizers, salads, wraps, burgers, sandwiches, omelettes, "finger foods and other stuff", pasta, specials... it could take you some time to go through it all (lucky for me, my friend Will gave some suggestions before we went - thanks, Will!). Something a little confusing about the menu that we discovered once our food arrived is that meals come with fries and a salad. A nice surprise (outside of what I will describe later on...), but it certainly would have been nice to know as we tend to order starters first - in this case, Todd ordered a salad to start and wasn't given any heads up from the server that his meal would come with one. An added cost that was unnecessary in the end.
So, perhaps with that, I will give you a run-down of what we ordered.
Carrie: As usual, I like to make sure that we have some appetizers for the table, so I ordered deep fried pickles and bruschetta to start, and then I had the California Club Sandwich - served with fries and salad.
Tonia: California Club Sandwich
Todd: Caesar salad to start, California Club Sandwich (it was a trend...)
Samer: Chicken Dinner: boneless, skinless chicken breast with BBQ sauce, served with salad and fries.
As we waited for our food, we had time to chat and look around. To be very honest, I was pretty surprised at what we noticed. As Samer said, it was almost like a scene out of CSI once you got looking more closely. At our booth, there were splatters of sauces on the wall that hadn't been wiped clean. I reached the ketchup bottle to find that the lid was covered in old gooey ketchup (kind of a pet peeve of mine... yuck). And a trip to use the restroom... well... that was an interesting experience in itself. The toilet is in such a tight space that if you're taller than 5'8", you'd better be comfortable sitting/squatting sideways... and while you're there - keep an eye out for the black mould that is growing on the wood of the floor boards in the corners of the space. Ultimately, I think that if Gordon Ramsay was to take a walk through during an episode of one of his shows, he would have very clear opinions of what he was seeing; and he would express them with a number of expletives. Now, I may not have been so frustrated with the lack of cleanliness if it wasn't for the fact that while we were there, there was only one other table, and the staff had lots of time to stand at the bar and talk to a friend or be on their cell phone... So to me, they certainly had time to pick up a cleaning rag. 
All of that said, we weren't there for the space - we were there for the food, so we stuck around to give it a try. Ultimately, I could have done without.
Here are our scores for the evening:
Carrie: 1.5 forks. Everything that arrived to the table except for the deep fried pickles was cold. Everything tasted bland and boring. The bruschetta... on top of being cold, the bread wasn't toasted, the cheese was hardly melted and the diced tomatoes on top didn't have any seasoning. And then my club sandwich came... Interestingly, the fries look exactly like the ones from Copper Penny, but weren't as flavourful... and because they weren't hot, they weren't very appetizing. The club sandwich was somewhat warm and boring. The description called it "proudly assembled and world famous"... I'm not sure who the judge of that was. Maybe this was an off-night, though - I've certainly heard people rave about it. I am also a tough judge of a club sandwich - I love them and eat them a lot... but the reason for that is often because I believe that if I'm going to eat somewhere and I want to be sure to be happy, a club is pretty hard to screw up. And then there was the salad. One thing I never expect to see at a restaurant is a salad that obviously came from a bag - this one was not only a bagged grocery store salad with iceberg lettuce and carrot shavings, but it was also brown and wilted. In the end, I only ate the sandwich and a few fries. I was too hungry to wait for a fix or turn it all away.
Tonia: 2 forks. Tonia liked the pickles, but thought that the bruschetta "sucked huge". Tonia said that "you could go to Loblaws and get a baguette and PC bruschetta mix and do it a lot better for yourself". I agree. The sandwich was good - but not the best in town, and the fries were a bad copy of something done better elsewhere. Tonia didn't even try the salad - "I don't like bagged salad".
Samer: 2.5 forks. In Samer's opinion, the fries were good and the chicken was edible. Samer tried deep fried pickles for the first time - and while all he had to say was that they were "crispy", I did notice that he said he would only try half of one, but went back for the other half. Samer also didn't touch the salad. He said it was obviously from a bag... and "I would almost rather get bagged than eat a bagged salad". Yikes.
Todd: With a score of 3 forks, Todd was the most satisfied customer. He thought that the club sandwich was well done and delicious, but added that everything else was pretty generic and he ate it, but didn't care for it.
Overall score: 2.25 forks.
I know that we have been to a number of restaurants to this point in our adventure... and perhaps, a result of that is that our standards and tastes change... But isn't that a good thing? I think that I have an obligation to be honest, which is sometimes hard to do, but I have promised myself to be honest from beginning to end. Am I an expert? Heck no. But I do like getting my money's worth. That said, as disappointed as I was, there is obviously a market that is happy with Stooley's - they have been open since 1985, after all. That fact in itself means that I'm not 100% opposed to the idea of venturing in again one day...
Next week, we will try out the Wok-In Restaurant. I'm hopeful we'll have a better result.
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