TD Bank Garden, Boston MA USA

Ordered at the TD Bank Garden, Boston's venue for the Bruins and Celtics, among other events and sports teams.

I’d rather go to a Bruins game than any other Boston sports team. Partially for nostalgia purposes, but mainly for the excitement; I tend to get bored at other sporting events, while the Bruins usually keep me enthralled in the action.

With that said and while my youth was different, nowadays I get to about 1 Bruins game a year. So that 1 Bruins game is everything to me. And Rachel making me miss Rene Rancourt’s national anthem was heart crushing.

But Rachel saved-the-day when, after I sat devastated that our Premium Seating food service in Boston’s TD Bank Garden lacked a sausage and only contained a “jumbo hotdog,” she pointed out their Turkey Club Panini.

Holy moly a club at a Bruins game with these amazing seats…. I no longer cared about missing Rene.

Setting the scene: we had assigned seats in a predominantly standing room only section of Premium Seating directly behind the home team’s goal.  There was a full bar behind us where everything could be ordered, and one waitress trying to serve everyone with an assigned seat.  Amazing view of an exciting game, and a decent menu to keep us full.

The waitress finally came over 10 minutes into the period. We put our orders in, but she didn’t write them down. Which meant she had to go through our orders 3 additional times to make sure she correctly memorized them… and then, of course, she came back to our seats to go through our orders yet again because she had forgotten some of the items.  I’m not sure about you, but for me, there is never a time in my life when I am impressed that a waiter memorizes my order; I much rather have them write it down.

Of course, what blew me away even more was that the waitress had to go to a computer, enter in an order, and then bring that order to the “kitchen”, and finally, when drinks and/or food were ready, go get the items and bring them to the guest… no wonder it took her 20+ minutes to even get to us.  She should take orders via an electronic device that simply prints the order in the kitchen/bar, and them someone else delivers the order. Doesn’t that sound more efficient? I promise you the waitress in this section could have taken at least 3 times more orders if they had a more efficient ordering system. It felt like they were losing out on easy revenue. But I digress….

After waiting for a long time, the waitress informed me that my club sandwich would take longer than anything else. “Why is that?” I pondered to her. “Because the club is made fresh! You will be able to feel its warmth,” she declared as I sat a bit impatient.

Concealed in a brown box, the Premium Seating Turkey Club Panini came out warm to the touch, as promised. But as excited as I was, dread was probably a more accurate emotion as I opened the box and saw a fairly unpleasant looking Turkey Club Panini.

Let’s start with some positives.  The thick, kettle cooked chips were addictive. A nice side that did not go unnoticed, and in fact, was a bigger sell than the Panini itself. Another positive: the turkey. Super moist, lovely cut, I was really happy with the turkey. And while I don’t like to give spoilers, I pretty much only ate the turkey (picked at it) and the chips.

There was nothing else positive about the Premium Seating Turkey Club Panini at Boston’s TD Bank Garden. Where did they get this bacon?! It had a very smoky taste – almost cigarette smoky. Yuck. Even more concerning was its extremely rubbery texture and paper thin density; this was truly some of the worst bacon I have ever had.

And the bread? Hardly Panini bread. This was more like a sub sandwich. Or a grinder, as some people say. The tasteless cheese that came with this club was 100% cemented to the bread.  And with it, the bacon was 100% cemented to the cheese. Everything besides the turkey and tomoto were glued together it felt like.

Oh yes, it came with 2 slices of flavorless tomato, barely covering a quarter of the club. What were they trying to accomplish with this? Was this a way of enabling visitors to feel less guilty, or (gasp) even healthy when ordering the Turkey Club Panini Sandwich?

I will never, ever, order this club again. What a shame. I pity the person who has season tickets and looks forward to ordering it… do they exist? I don’t want to find out.

Amazing Bruins game overall though… I can’t wait to go to my next. But I’ll probably eat before the game.

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