NATURAL BRIDGE — There's been a small eatery on the corner of Lime Street and Route 3 in the hamlet of Natural Bridge, east of Watertown, for nearly 20 years.

It has operated under various names, the most recent being Darcy's Café, which opened in May.

It always has been, and continues to be, a folksy place that specializes in "home cooking."

I called a few days in advance to inquire about the dinner menu. Homemade macaroni and cheese, smoked turkey legs, cornbread, liver and onions — say no more. I LOVE liver and onions ... we're there.

It's a neat old building — wooden floors, high ceilings, plastic flowers on the tables, nice and clean — you could tell someone took pride in its appearance.

We didn't get off to a good start. It was our young waiter's first night. He was still in training. His trainer, a middle-aged gentleman, stood right next to him as he took our order.

We spoke slowly and clearly to help the kid out, starting with appetizers: "Garlic bread with cheese." "Quesadilla." "Loaded baked potato."

Then for entrées: "Smoked turkey legs." "Fried pork steak." "Pulled pork sandwich." And of course, "liver and onions — medium-rare, please; I don't mind pink."

At this point, the trainee was running out of space on his order pad, so the astute trainer suggested, "You know, you could use another page."

Ouch, no kidding.

For drinks, "Two Pepsis and two Diet Pepsis, please."

Uh-uh. We forgot to give the sides when we ordered our entrées (entrées come with two sides). "Cornbread and creamed corn with the turkey legs." "Cornbread and mac and cheese with the pork steak." "Baked beans with my liver and onions."

The trainer condescendingly reprimanded the trainee: "You should have skipped lines between the entrées so you'd have room for the sides."

No kidding. Maybe you should have told that to the poor kid earlier instead of staring out the front window when we arrived.

Our orders were in (finally), and little bottles of Pepsi were delivered. "Could I get a glass and some ice for mine?"

"Nope," replied the trainer guy. "Ice machine's broke."

Guess the glass was broke too, 'cause I never got one of those either.

Here comes Darcy from the kitchen. I'll bet she couldn't read the kid's order.

"OK, I'm out of the turkey legs and the pulled pork. I'm also out of mac and cheese, cornbread and creamed corn ... and also the green beans."

So we substituted a gyro sandwich for the turkey legs and pork chop sandwich for the pulled pork, and corn on the cob for the unavailable sides.

A little while later, the trainee got to deliver the food to his first table of four.

Baked beans arrived first. "Be careful, they're hot," he said. I could see that. It was right out of the microwave, bubbling hot around the outside of the bowl and still cool in the center. Tasted OK — lots of brown sugar. We figured it was homemade.

Next came the baked potato appetizer ("Try something different," it said in the menu). There were a half-dozen items listed to dress up your spud, so we said, "Load it up — we'll take 'em all."

The soggy, tasteless potato didn't exactly arrive loaded. There was a pile of dried chives covering the entire potato and some melted orange cheese underneath. A small cup of butter and some chopped white onions were next to the potato.

We asked the kid about the sour cream and bacon bits we were expecting. He returned from the kitchen with some nasty looking bacon bits (more like scraps of dried pork ends) and "we don't have any sour cream."

Yep, that baked potato was something different, all right.

Then came the gyro, a sandwich that would bring a tear to the eyes of some of my Greek friends. Four slices of precooked and preseasoned lamb that you can get from any restaurant supplier were overcooked to the point that the meat looked like curled up crispy bacon.

It was served on a hamburger bun along with lettuce, tomato and a yogurt/cucumber sauce with fried onions.

Corn on the cob hit the table next, several small dishes containing several small pieces of mushy, flavorless, overcooked, certainly-not-fresh corn, sitting in a pool of margarine.

The pork chop sandwich was a skinny little piece overcooked pork on a hamburger bun. We didn't mind the skinny part (after all, it was just a sandwich), but you had to be careful to eat around the bone in the pork chop between the burger buns.

The fried pork steak appeared to be and tasted like it had been deep-fried, all curled up and shriveled up and dried out. It looked like an old sneaker on a plate.

My liver was equally dried out, way overcooked despite my pretty clear request for "medium-rare-I-don't-mind-pink." It was like eating a plateful of compacted sawdust. Even the sautéed onions were dry.

Holy mackerel, here come the appetizers! Between the garlic bread with cheese and the cheese quesadilla, the garlic bread was the winner. It had all its components: bread, garlic and cheese. The quesadilla had cheese, but no sour cream or salsa.

And here comes Darcy again. "Sorry the appetizers came out last — I burned them the first time." And, "I'm sorry I was out of so many things ... I didn't have a chance to go to the store today." Finally — and I was praying she wouldn't ask it — "How was everything?"

Silence.

How fast could I slide under this table so I won't have to answer that question? was what flashed through my mind. But I quickly recovered with, "The liver was more like well-done than medium-rare ..."

She said she didn't see "medium-rare" on the order, and I can certainly believe her on that.

With plates of half-eaten and non-eaten food all over the table, the young recruit came right over and dutifully left the bill on the table ($46 including tax), also leaving the plates of half-eaten and non-eaten food on the table, along with empty plastic Pepsi bottles.

Just in case we thought we might miss something, we called him back to see what might be for dessert.

A quick trip to the kitchen and back, "We're all out of dessert," he reported.

Whew, now we could head across the street to the busy ice cream stand we'd been watching all night long.

I was starving ...

TIDBITS

When in Natural Bridge, be sure to visit Treats & 'Tiques, serving soft and hard ice cream.

Mango ice was good; hard raspberry ice cream was OK, soft maple ice cream was excellent.

A waffle cone with a very generous "small" portion of mint moose tracks (hard mint ice cream with lots of chocolate throughout) was more like a very large portion anywhere else.

Equally very large was the "banana boat" — a traditional banana split, with vanilla and chocolate ice cream served in a plastic "boat," surrounded by bananas and covered with gobs of whipped cream.

You can contact Walter E. Siebel via e-mail: wsiebel@wdt.net.

Darcy's Café

44005 State Route 3

Natural Bridge, N.Y.

644-5015

Home cooking in a neat and clean setting

HOURS: 6 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. seven days a week

Rating: One fork