Of course, in the world of restaurants, there are a wide assortment of establishments from which to choose. Putting aside all things fast-food, I don't have a great deal of experience. When Hubby and I were first married, we proudly deemed every Friday night "date night". And so every Friday evening we would hop in our little two-door car and whiz off to a new eatery. We tried all but one in our small town and branched out here and there to other small towns and famed places. But as all things in our lives, we pulled out the calculator one evening and discovered our little Friday night hobby was costing us over $1,000 a year. That put an end to date night, unfortunately. So since our first year of marriage, we haven't explored too many diners. Interestingly, this has only amplified our pickiness. What I mean is that though we cannot claim to be fine dining coniseurs, we have high expectations when we do make the choice to go out.
Thus our experience at Less-than-amazing-restaurant was...eh.
We have a lovely friend who offered to babysit Reagan while we went out for our anniversary Friday evening. Hubby made reservations and we arrived 5 minutes 'early'. The hostess asked if outside was okay. It wasn't. We are quite apparently allergic to all things pollen so outside would have been way too gross. Well, in that case your table isn't quite ready. We waited 10 minutes and were seated at a nice table by the window. A pleasant spot. A friendly 20 something young man was our waiter. He took our orders and delivered our salads and breadsticks without wasting time. We happily munched on our salads and indulged in the soft breadsticks. Bread is always my favorite part of going out. Half an hour passes. He apologizes for the wait and promises our food is on its way. Another half hour passes. The large group of 15 people leaves as does his excuse of "there's a large party here and as soon as we serve them..." The waiter returns and appologizes again for the wait. Food is still on its way. Another half hour passes and our waiter has to wake us up to hand us our plates of FINALLY-THERE food. I'd like to tell you that we waited so long because they tried so hard to get our order right. I'd like to tell you that we twiddled our thumbs for 90 minutes because the food was just that amazing. I'd really like to. But no. The meat was right - but not impressive. The sides we ordered either didn't come at all or were wrong. When we informed our waiter we were missing items, his shoulders visibly slumped. I pitied him. He kept promising a discount and we kept smiling politely but didn't argue. When he offered dessert I kept my sarcastic "We really don't have another hour for that" comment to myself and simply said "No thanks." It was just not a stellar experience.
Lest you think I am complaining, I am not. We got our whole meal for half of what it was supposed to cost (a winner in our book) and truly, it was probably a good thing that it took so long. This was our first outting - the first date night - since Reagan was born where we left her with someone other than a grandparent. Truth be told, part of me was really wondering how she was doing (both of the shes). It would have been pretty tempting to fly through our meal and zip back home to see how those we left behind fared. Clearly Less-than-amazing-restaurant had other plans and forced us to sit there, have a conversation like two married people, and enjoy some time away from home. All in all, it wasn't a bad deal.
But we won't be going back there for quite some time.
No comments:
Post a Comment