Waiter, There's a Blattella in My Soup!

Can you trigger a bad experience by talking about a similar bad experience? Well, maybe so.

Hubby was explaining his difficulty in finding healthy food while at a rural meeting in South Carolina recently. The hotel restaurant was not appealing and expensive so his team headed for a local popular restaurant in the town. He looked through the menu and found out that everything on it was fried. I mean, he likes fried food but that is the problem. Finally his eyes settled on the following entrée - “Grilled chicken breast with roasted red potatoes and garden fresh zucchini.” This had to be healthy, right? So he ordered it. Guess what arrived. He got a grilled chicken breast, yep. Only thing is that it was covered about a half-inch thick with some kind of glutinous white gravy. He looked at the roast potatoes and they were first BATTER fried and then roasted and of course, you have guessed that the zucchini was also batter covered and fried. So much for a healthy meal.

Now, he was telling me this story as we pulled into a mall to eat after our builders meeting. The mall appeared to be only a few years old and had the traditional chain restaurants. I was craving a margarita and so we selected the chain On the Border. (Now, just so I don’t get sued, we have eaten at this same chain in a different location and found the food quite respectable along with the other services.) This time was a little different.

I ordered my margerita and the waitress asked if I wanted a “large or small.” This should have been my first clue, as I don’t usually frequent places that ask this question. When she told me how large the large was, my old-age judgment kicked in (along with my husband’s dirty look) and I ordered the small.

The drink arrived along with our order. I sipped the drink and it seemed a little bland and lemonadey – (this isn’t a word, so I don’t know how to spell it.) I am a picky, picky person about my margeritas and years ago realized the only place to get a good tasting kicker drink such as this is in Mexico, so I sighed and accepted that fact. Then the waitress started pulling the grilled steak and onions off the hot platter that she brought. She asked if I wanted onions and I said, “Yes.” (of course.) My husband also had onions with the entrée he ordered. We soon discovered that these onions had been left too long on the shelf or were picked green or something as they were chewy and dry! Ick. When the manager with the bleached teeth smile came by our table, we mentioned that he needed a new produce supplier as the onions were pretty much inedible. He apologized but didn’t give me the impression he gave a flipping you know what.

I continued to nurse my drink finding it blander and blander when the waitress brought another margerita. I looked up in surprise and clarified with her that I had not ordered a second drink.

“I know.” She said. “The bartender accidentally made two, so instead of letting it go to waste, I decided to bring it.”

Oh, I thought. I put the first drink aside and sipped the second. It actually had essence of tequila and I said to my hubby. “You know what? I think the idiot bartender forgot the tequila in the first drink and sent out this second drink so I wouldn’t complain.”

We continued through the rubbery onions, acceptable steak, and less-bland drink when something caught the corner of my eye. It was a Blattella germanica moving down the wall and toward the table. I am so very familiar with these having lived for years in the tropics. As this little brown nugget proceeded to cross the table toward me I put down my fork and napkin and immediately moved to the waiting bench near the front door of the restaurant, explaining the situation to hubby. I didn’t return.

When hubby called for the bill he elaborated on why I had left, and wouldn’t you know it? They didn’t offer us anything - not a free meal, a % off our bill, a free dessert, nothing. We could have been obnoxious and not paid the bill and let all the customers in the restaurant know the type of place they were eating in, but we aren’t that type. We just won’t eat at that chain again in any new areas!

The moral is don’t tell bad restaurant stories before you eat out.