Wondered About The Trails Hit Piece

Trails is so close to my house. The things the food reviewer highlights as weaknesses strike me as quirky strengths:

With its dated aluminum awnings, the fading and peeling paint, cowboy wallpaper, velvet paintings and those Formica tables, it’s in serious need of an update....

...Trails is not a good restaurant, but neither is it a terrible one. It’s a place stuck in purgatory, anchored unceremoniously in a Sacramento food scene that no longer really exists.

...The menu is dated and lacks a coherent vision....  There are combinations that scream 1980s, like ribs and prawns or shish kebab and ribs or shish kebab and chicken. The salads, all iceberg lettuce and faded-red, flavorless tomatoes, make clear that Trails has yet to sign on with the farm-to-fork movement.

...The disconnect is all too obvious at Trails. The vegetables that came with our steak? Our skewers of desiccated chicken? Our decent roast chicken? There weren’t any. We got a sad baked potato or some competent French fries. When we asked about vegetables, our server plunked down our side salads and said, “You’re looking’ at ’em.”

...The beer list is stuck in 1979.

...Charming as it may be, Trails lost its way by refusing to set foot in the new and much more dynamic Sacramento, where we expect better food and know where to find it. There once was a time, many years ago, where Western-themed restaurants were all the rage in Sacramento, probably because Westerns were all the rage in movies and on TV. Folks even got dressed up in Western garb when they went out to eat here.

That Sacramento, cute as a button, no longer exists.