pstlyfdiva's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The plates are really hot, let me just slide them in, in front of Mom C has been working late on Friday's for the past few weeks, so by the time she gets home at 7:30, I am starving. This Friday was no exception. I made a couple of suggestions of restaurants that are close to our house and not in the chaos of the mall area eateries. I suggested a mom and pop Italian place; we have only eaten there once, but liked it and the other suggestion was a new Mexican place, it is supposed to be more authentic and really good. C didn't like either of those ideas, but she liked the sound of Italian, so she chose Olive Garden, the McDonald’s of Italian food. I have never been a fan of Olive Garden; I don't think most of the food has much taste. They used to have one dish that was decent, a chicken and pesto ravioli, of course they took it off the menu. Despite my better judgment, we ventured to the Olive Garden, right smack in the middle of the mall chaos. The first clue that the evening was not going to go well should have been when we couldn’t find a parking space for 5 minutes. Finally, after I stalked a couple coming out of the restaurant, we got a space. We go inside, there were no less than a million people crowded in the vestibule waiting to be seated to enjoy bland pseudo Italian food. Once we fought our way to the hostess, we were told it would be a 40 minute wait. Oh joy! I lost the next 40 minutes of my life listening to a group of sorority girls talk about how they were sooooooooooooooo old (the oldest in the group was 20). I decided that in order to be in that sorority you have to own a flat iron and use it faithfully. You know that you have truly lost that time when you make observations like that one. Finally my little red buzzer lit up and started wiggling. Food! Yes! I no longer cared if it was polyester pasta, it was food! That elation, however, was short lived. First, “Becky”, took about 10 minutes to acknowledge us. Then when she brought us our water, she put lemon in it, despite 60 seconds earlier asking us if we wanted lemon. No we didn’t. Fine, she was busy, we let it slide. We ordered, she brought the salad. We ate the salad. We finish with the salad. We had now been finished with the salad for 10 minutes. She walked by the table, mumbled something unintelligible. She didn’t clear the plates. So we decided she must be mentally challenged and doesn’t realize that when the fork is turned over, that is the signal that the diner is finished. Therefore we stacked our plates on top of one another and slid them to the very edge of the table. It had now been 20 minutes since we finished our salad, no plate clearing had occurred and no entrees had appeared. 25 minutes. 30 minutes. This was getting ridiculous. 35 minutes since finishing the salad (not from ordering) the food arrived. Yes! Once again my elation was short lived. “The plates are really hot, let me just slide them in, in front of Mom.” What did she just say? Mom? Did I hear her right? Mom? I am 28 years old (and look young for my age) and C is just shy of 25. Pray tell, how could I be her mother?! I was going to let it slide too, but the waitress wouldn’t let me. She looked at me about that time and said, “Oh my God, you aren’t old enough to be her mom.” Stammer, mutter, mumble. “Oh, ah”, “Errr”, “Well you do kind of have that mom quality”. I just looked at her, with one of my famous laser stares, thinking, “Would you please shut up?!” Finally she did, but only after putting cheese on my dish, which I didn’t ask for. Who puts cheese on a seafood in wine sauce dish? She left the table, at last we could eat. This was the first time I really looked at the food; both dishes had that skin of “I have been sitting under the heat lamp for at least 15 minutes”, great. So while “Becky” was doing who knows what, our food has been ready for a long time. We decided it was pointless and would just make more of a delay to say anything about it, so we ate. The waitress came back and kept trying to apologize, which just made it worse. Finally, after two hours in Olive Garden, we finished, paid and left. Those are two hours that I will never get back. I did gain something from the evening, a complex that I look older than I am or I look like a pevert with a child. You pick, which is worse? Hmmmm… I am choosing the restaurant from now on.
2:40 p.m. - 2006-02-27 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
||||||
|
||||||