Thursday, August 28, 2008

Dinner With Julie Part 2


A continuation of the August 17th post where we make plans to go to dinner with a most excellent waitress.

We had agreed to meet at the Lantana Ale House, a kind of sports, music, inside /outside seating kind of place. I have eaten there quite often and knew that there was a variety of food which most likely would please all the members of our party.

When we arrived, the sign at the door asked you to wait to be seated-Julie moves on past it, scans the area and chooses a set of tables that she proceeds to put together for us. We are still sheepishly inching our way towards the tables, waiting for a wait staff to question why we did not wait---I guess she thought better of asking after seeing how Julie took charge of the situation...
We are seated (by Julie) when suddenly our real waitress comes out and begins her spiel forgetting to mention "Todays specials". Julie jumps on that like white on rice---I was starting to feel afraid for the young waitress. Julie takes everyones drink order and then recites it back to the girl in an organized fashion along with our appetizer order. I thought this was the end of it and that the girl would take the hint that she needed to step up her game. I relaxed and let out a deep breath.
Well we start perusing the menu and it turns out that Julie is the Gold Medal winner in the"I have some questions" event. Joe used to swear that it was me, but it turns out I cannot even score bronze against Julie. Of course, her questions are better than mine because she knows what goes on behind the scenes in a restaurant. My burning question is always, "Are the wings breaded or can I git em nekkid?", which is enough to make Joe roll his eyes and apologize for the trouble I causing...DICK.
HE did not say peep during Julies interrogation of the waitress concerning cooking methods, frozen or fresh, light or heavy, trans fat or not, cream versus milk, real ice tea vs powdered, etc. I kept waiting for him to comment....DICK. Not even a vein on his bald head stood out...DICK.
In any case, I appreciated Julies expertise as she timed the waitresses trips to the table, refills of water, accuracy of dinner order....NONE of which were to Julies standards. It came down to a tip countdown, whch is to say everytime the waitress did not DO what Julie considered to be timely and appropriate, the announcement was made of what her tip had decreased to. When I heard 17% and we had just been served...all thoughts of trying out this line of work some summer went right out the window...I was not worthy :)
Im not quite sure what the final total was, although the bill was about $126.00 for six people....
I can't wait to go out again with Julie and Mike...... and DICK.