Late eats and too many beets are the things of a curse
We should have known it would be a jinxed night when my wife
said she wasn’t that hungry.
It was last Friday night in Salinas and my oldest son had just
finished playing a basketball game at Salinas High School. My wife
was tired and wanted to go home, but her sons and husband were
hungry, so she acquiesced.
We first tried Applebee’s, but they said it would be 20 minutes
before we could get seated. It was nearly 9 p.m. and we weren’t
willing to wait. So we headed over to Marie Callender’s, which
wasn’t jumping with the Friday crowd like other restaurants were.
It was a smart choice, we thought.
Late eats and too many beets are the things of a curse
We should have known it would be a jinxed night when my wife said she wasn’t that hungry.
It was last Friday night in Salinas and my oldest son had just finished playing a basketball game at Salinas High School. My wife was tired and wanted to go home, but her sons and husband were hungry, so she acquiesced.
We first tried Applebee’s, but they said it would be 20 minutes before we could get seated. It was nearly 9 p.m. and we weren’t willing to wait. So we headed over to Marie Callender’s, which wasn’t jumping with the Friday crowd like other restaurants were. It was a smart choice, we thought.
As a little background, my wife has bad luck when it comes to food ordering. She is usually the last one served, regardless of how many people are at the table or where we are or what she orders. It’s just the way it is and we’ve all come to accept it and laugh about it.
On this night, we placed our orders after a bit of a wait, apparently because there were no more than two waiters for the whole place. We didn’t think much of it, though, because the crowd was sparse. We liked our chances.
I ordered the usual, like I usually do at every restaurant I frequent. If I find a dish I like, I order it over and over again because I don’t want to be disappointed by trying something new that I end up not liking. Not very adventurous, I know, but I like what I like and I like liking what I order.
Back to my wife, she ordered something simple and light, figuring she would keep it simple so we could eat and head home.
She ordered the rosemary glazed chicken salad with spring greens, with balsamic dressing on the side. We enjoyed conversation with my parents while we snacked on cornbread and waited for our food.
Our waiter, who was perfectly courteous, brought my food – the usual – and plates for my sons and my parents. We began to eat, figuring my wife’s food was on the way.
Once again, she was last. We got a bit of a chuckle out of it and chalked it up to the jinx.
Within a few minutes, her rosemary glazed chicken arrived! Oh, wait; that’s the rosemary glazed chicken dinner, which is not a salad and is not a light meal this late at night.
She notified the nice waiter, who apologized and promised to have the right meal back to her “in a couple of minutes.” Meanwhile, the rest of us kept eating, with my wife’s blessing. And we kept eating. And kept eating until we had just about cleaned our plates.
Finally, we saw the waiter walk by our empty section of the restaurant and I summoned him over.
“Is she going to get her food?” I asked, trying to be polite (a must when dealing with anyone who is handling your food) but showing my displeasure with the mix-up and subsequent delay.
He profusely apologized and promised to fix the problem, which he attributed to a mix-up in the kitchen. Sure enough, he was back in a jiffy, with the rosemary glazed chicken! Oh, wait; that’s a beet salad.
It had no chicken and no rosemary and no glaze. Just a couple gloopy piles of beets.
The waiter walked away before my wife realized that her restaurant jinx had struck twice in one night, but we all shared a good laugh and called the guy over one more time.
When notified that the rosemary glazed chicken salad that became the rosemary glazed chicken dinner and then transformed into a beet salad was still the wrong order, he said he would go talk to the manager and get that “taken off the bill.”
A few minutes later, he presented us with the bill and said “we took 50 percent off your meal and we’re sorry for the trouble.”
Oh no he didn’t, I thought, knowing that my hungry and tired wife was not going to be happy with that solution because the half-price meal was half too much because it wasn’t the meal she ordered. They wanted us to pay 50 percent of the menu price for a beet salad that we didn’t order and that was a replacement for a meal that we didn’t order.
My wife left the table this time and I’m not exactly sure what she told our waiter but she returned to the table with her portion of the meal removed from the bill and another 20 percent taken off the entire bill.
That “beet” the alternative and certainly was a civil solution. It didn’t, unfortunately, break my wife’s restaurant ordering curse.
Adam Breen writes a blog at http://thebreenblog.blogspot.com and teaches newspaper and yearbook classes at San Benito High School. He is a reporter for The Pinnacle and former editor of the Free Lance.
