plonq | Let us never return there again

We went out for a rib dinner with one of the local furs this evening.

atara and I have eaten at this place before, and while it was not the most memorable dining experience we'd ever had, the food and service had been passably good at the time. Tonight was one of those surreal dining experiences that I think we'd all rather forget, though.

It was no single thing that made the ordeal, uh, special.

Maybe it was the large, noisy kids' birthday party a few tables down. This place is anything but a family restaurant, in fact it's one step removed from being a bar. It's a steak and ribs place. Who in their right mind takes their kid and all his noisy friends there for a party?

Maybe it was the poor, frazzled waitress who kept returning every few minutes to inform us that they were out of key ingredients for what we had ordered. Fresh out of the prime rib that you'd talked us into ordering, eh? What's this - somebody beat us to the last of the baked potatoes?

Maybe it was the creepy - albeit dapper - owner who had this habit of literally appearing out of nowhere so that he could hover over our table and ask how things were going. He always managed to do so when we had just taken large bites of food, and refused to leave until he got a coherent answer.

atara got particularly creeped out by him when he appeared behind her, appologized that they had run out of her first choice for a meal and then refused to leave until she told him what she had ordered as a replacement meal. Naturally he did this only after she'd shoved an entire dinner roll into her maw, and it was a long while before she could answer him. He just stood there and stared blankly while she chewed, waiting for her to swallow up and answer.

Maybe it was the creepy Indian guy who, well, to be honest none of us could quite figure out his role in the restaurant. His job seemed to consist of randomly moving around and hovering over the patrons while they ate, occasionally asking how things were with their meals. It's possible that he was a co-owner, but it's equally possible that he was just some random guy - another patron perhaps who couldn't find his own table.