I guess UPS filmed a commercial in the driveway of the building in which I work this morning. Apparently it will air on ESPN prior to and during the upcoming NASCAR season. That basically makes me famous, right?

I wrote this up elsewhere, but I figure I'd better get as much exposure as possible if my career as a food critic is going to take off. So without further ado, my review of uWink at Hollywood and Highland center.

Nikki and I went to uWink in Hollywood to meet some friends for a birthday celebration. Being our friends, they were about an hour late, so we had ample time to hang out at the bar and observe two separate teen/tween birthday parties show up.

The servers fell all over themselves to take orders and such from us rather than letting us interact with the consoles for anything other than the handful of available games. My guess was that the more diners interact with the servers, the more they tip. An alternative may be that the system doesn't work that well and is slower and less efficient.

Our group eventually showed up and we went to a table. The kind of food on offer as well as the prices felt kind of incompatible with the atmosphere. The decor seemed to be aiming for a sort of night-club chic, the music was aimed at those of us in our late 20s, but the consoles and the clientele felt more like the local late-night diner after a high-school dance. I think everyone got a hamburger of one sort or another; I couldn't really imagine anyone ordering a fancy $30 entree at a place like this.

We sent in our drink orders first, under the strict instructions from our server that we shouldn't hit 'send' until we'd all chosen. This meant all our drinks would come out at once. All at once is nice for the servers, but not really the point of the "order whenever and we'll bring it right out" promise of the consoles. After carefully entering our names, and making sure each drink was matched to the correct name, and wrestling with the machine to convince it we really were all 21 or over, the order went in. A while later, the servers came out, and just started yelling each drink out so we could claim them. Except the server didn't actually pay attention. I had to wave my hand and yell to get my drink.

The same basic thing happened with the food. Twice the server came out to apologize for not having any turkey burger patties (nobody had ordered one). I opted for the sun-dried tomato aioli and balsamic reduction for the sauces on my burger. It arrived with ketchup. The burger was pretty good, although given the rigmarole we went through to precisely specify the food we wanted, it was weird that the food was so imprecise. Again, it was decent, although better burgers are available for less money.

Of course, the food isn't really the main draw of uWink. The digital entertainment was a mixed bag. The touch-screens worked, and weren't greasy or gross or anything. There were a couple games that worked for four people: One Pictionary clone and a Taboo-like game. The Pictionary clone had some bugs. The system transmitted the strokes of the drawing player to the guessing player with some network latency and with a surprising lack of fidelity. At one point I leaned accross the table, and the image seen by the person drawing didn't look much like the image presented to the guesser. The Taboo-like didn't actually show a list of taboo words, so you could say anything at all to get your partner to say the secret word.

Restaurant-wide games were a bit better. Trivia, picture memorization, and find the difference in the two similar picture games were all a hit. As a bonus, the score was projected on the wall so we could see how things were going.

So overall, the experience was novel but nothing I would drive to Hollywood again to repeat. The slick appearance couldn't really make up for the sloppy underpinnings, and the servers obviously didn't buy in to the concept. The concept of the place is pretty cool: A slick, hip spot for nice food and a bit of digital entertainment thrown in. The execution of the concept, however, still could use a lot of work.