Friday, October 5, 2012

Any angry post about a restaurant

I don't think I have ever made plans that have ever completely worked out. And I don't think you have either. And I don't think you have ever met anyone who has and I don't think the guy rifling for his keys under the lamppost has and I just don't think that's a thing that has ever happened ever.

Tonight was one of those "plans-not-actually-happening" nights.

All week I had this idea in my mind of how tonight would go. A few friends were going to gather in a dorm and have a good old-fashioned sleepover. We were going to watch TV and do our nails and eat and say things we would regret in the morning. This was the thought that kept me going through two papers, a math test, and a stilted presidential debate, and the even worse, in-class discussion of it.

But of course that didn't happen.

People decided to stay on campus for the weekend, people decided to make new plans, people decided to be asses. So instead of having a silly night of victory after my week of work, I got miscommunication and disagreements. Gee, what contest did I win?

One of my friends wanted to go into town. After some persuading I agreed to join her and some others. After all, I really should explore my new home a bit more. We decided to go to some little pasta place that my parents and I had tried eating at last week. I say "try" because we never actually got our food. All we ordered was soup but after 45 minutes when it didn't come we had to leave in time to go on a boat ride. It turns out they made each bowl individually. Which seems lovely and personal on the surface but is actually really dumb. I don't know how knowledgeable you are in the field of liquid cuisine, but soup has to simmer. It just does. That's how it gets flavor. you can't just make one bowl of it to order. Plus it would be way to expensive. So though I had to abandon the bistro on my first attempt I thought I'd try it again.

So we went in and waited in the crammed room for our table. And we waited. And we waited. We could see what table were going to have. But they hadn't cleared it. So we watched it. Just as I was considering grabbing a dishrag and wiping it down myself, a waitress started to clean it up. So we scooted into our corner of the restaurant and looked through the menu. Everything sounded really good. The inside of the building was very small, but cozy and artfully decorated in a musical style with interesting lighting. But on closer inspection, it wasn't.

A.) $2 or $3 or $4 charge for sharing a meal. It varied depending on what menu you got. Seriously? You're in a college town. If you think us cheap-ass students can pay $4 when we have to share a meal don't you think we'd just order another dish? For $4 you could pretty much buy another lunch.
B.) They did not offer smaller lunch orders for cheaper which is what we planned on getting. Apparently those aren't offered past a certain time despite the menu not saying anything about it.
C.) Once again, the wait. It just took so damn long. I only just remembered that I had a salad, it was so long ago.
D.) The pizza tasted like Spaghetti-Os.

Other than that the food was pretty good. I've been spoiled with Italian food, growing up where I did, but it was tasty enough.

So we got ready to pay. The restaurant didn't do separate checks, half of us were paying with cards, I only had $3 on me, the woman did not know how to do math, and one of the girls I was with started having some sort of episode and shouting that she wasn't going to pay $118 for pasta. The owner was quite catty about the fact that she had to do math for SEVEN PEOPLE and kept repeating to herself that she was a small business owner, almost like a mantra.

I know you're a small business owner, ma'am, but I have a small wallet. And I am not much in the mood for spending $12 to sit in a too-small restaurant for three and a half hours, eating so-hot-and-weirdly-spiced-that-you-don't-even-taste-things angel-hair pasta, only to have to do the math for my bill on the back of a napkin while you stare on aggressively.

In protest I ripped up the business card that would offer me a free meal after I ate there ten times on the sidewalk outside. No doubt I would have to wait for five hours and then be forced to sit under a table and add fractions before I could eat it.

So my plans have no mutated into "sit in my dorm writing a blogpost and then catch up on last night's Parks and the Office.