A Laughably Terrible Restaurant Experience with @pierces550
Sometimes You Have To Laugh At Terrible Restaurant Service And Pray You Don't Get Sick
My friend @pierces550 (Check out her introduce yourself post by clicking the picture below) and I decided to go to a new restaurant after her modeling audition.
We decided on a Mexican restaurant with pretty high ratings across the board instead of opting for a nearby burger restaurant with slightly lower reviews.
It was quite small, but offered both indoor and outdoor seating. We opted for indoor seating on the faux crocodile booth seats since mosquitoes tend to find us if we are outside too long and neither of us had any repellent on us. There were some pretty cool mexican artifacts on the walls and some cacti behind our seats. Nothing too upscale and quite typical of a non chain local restaurant. Not too fancy.
The waitress approached us with waters and a menu and we looked over the menu and then started to notice a few things that made us question the cleanliness of the restaurant. We noticed the plastic glasses did not look clean, and for the first time in my life (third world countries included) I was served water without ice.
(I know we are fortunate to even have drinkable water and I count that a blessing, but when I am out paying for a meal, that is a different story).
We didn't have straws and asked for those since putting the glasses to our lips seemed a bit unsanitary. @pierces550 had no interest in said water and opted for a cool beverage from the fridge. I ventured a sip from the straw and was greeted by wonderful rush of luke warm water. Everyone's favorite thirst quenching temperature! I decided maybe I wouldn't finish my glass and thought about possibly getting a $1.10 bottled water from the fridge (Marketing ploy? I thought I could outsmart it with the following dialogue)
"Excuse me can I get some ice for my water?
"We don't have ice."
"Oh is your ice machine broken?"
"No, we are a small restaurant. We don't have room for an icemaker."
"You...don't..have...ice?
"No"
After she left I turned to Sam and said "I think I can find a desktop icemaker that would fit on their counter." Here is what a two second Amazon search led me to.
Something I believe could sit on the counter and not take up space. At the very least the should by the bottled water which probably cost mere pennies and offer it from the refrigerator if they were dead set on not having an icemaker. Boom there goes a rating star crashing off into the distance.
We finally decided on food. I went with the chicken quesadillas and Sam opted for a rice and chicken bowl
While we were waiting for the food to be made, we were watching the chef behind the counter cook up some food. Pretty normal thing for a space conscious restaurant to need their cook to be in a nearby area. But out of the corner of my eye I saw the plastic-gloved hand of the cook rub his nose on the back on his hand. Sam and I looked at each other with "Did I just see what I think I saw?" eyebrows raised stares. Not a great thing to see before your food is next to be made. We debated leaving or bringing this up, but opted for a third option a little bit later.
The food looked great, but notice the bottom of the sour cream on Sam's plate touching her rice and chicken. If the dirty water glasses were any inkling of how well they cleaned their condiment cups, this would be another potential contamination that could cause sickness.
We took a bite of our food and then realized we didn't pray for it. The prayer went something along the lines of "Lord strengthen our immune systems and don't let us get sick from this and please make this food nourishing to our bodies." I haven't gotten sick and I don't think Sam did easier, so I think we had an answered prayer that day.
We paid for the food and tried to respectfully give some restaurant 101 tips (Sam's writing, I don't own purple pens haha).
The food tasted great, a little spicy for Sam, but all in all good quality for the price. Sam had enough to warrant a takeout box (if you could call it that). It felt like the material on an egg carton, but about ten times more flimsy and barely closed or stayed shut (no tape was give, but maybe if we could spot ten cents, they would have hooked us up with a two inch piece of scotch tape). On the way to the car Sam had her phone on top of the "takeout" box and as we were walking she went to reposition it and wouldn't you know, the cheap thing bent and sent her phone tumbling to the street landing on the edge of the phone.
Sam handed me her phone, afraid to check what the damage was. This is usually a fatal screen crack inducing blow to any phone, but once again the good Lord was watching out for us and there were no cracks, and only a small scuff was evidence that anything happened at all. We decided to go shopping and when we got back to the car, luckily we had place the takeout container in a plastic bag, because all sort of leakage felt like it was about to happen and the smell on a hot day of juice from chicken in your car can make you want to purchase a whole new car.
While not quite the restaurant experience we hoped for, it did make for a fun unforgettable memory.
A few stars should be taken away for the things we saw, but we did have fun. Sometimes you just need to laugh and pray and enjoy what life throws at you. (Although if that chef were to throw something at us, it would probably be best to simply dodge it for sanitary reasons).
I even created a little chorus of a song to Rae Sremmond's song "No Type"
"We ain't got no ice."
"Warm water is the only thing that I like."
While this is a very sarcastic article and meant to poke fun, I am grateful that we live in a place where we do have access to food and restaurants and water that many people would feel like kings if they were fortunate enough to have.
