Just Not Our Night

My husband very sweetly suggested we go out to dinner last night. We rarely do that, just the two of us anyway. So I got stuff for the "kids" to have for dinner, got dressed up (well sort of), put stuff in the oven, and we headed out. Our first choice was the restaurant where I'd just paid a hefty deposit towards a wedding reception. Unfortunately, there was no getting in there without reservations. We toured around town checking out one place after another, but unfortunately between skiers and people who had gotten out earlier than us every place was packed. So we headed for what should have been a safe choice. It's more a diner/family restaurant than fine dining, but we've eaten there loads of times and the food is good, if not fancy.

Well last night was obviously not our night. We asked for water with lemon to begin with. We got the water, but no lemon. We had to wait a long time for our food (despite the fact that it was on the specials list). The waitress reappeared before the food arrived to inform us that the squash was going to take awhile to heat up in the microwave. Then she reappeared again to inform us that they were out of squash and the vegetable choice was now corn. This was still ok, so we continued to wait. Finally the plates appeared along with the rolls (which ordinarily come out while you are waiting for your food). It was now nearly 8 o clock and we were worried about getting back in time to feed the animals before the horses got too restless, so I dove right in to the grilled salmon. BIG mistake. One bite of the salmon was enough to prove it was spoiled. David took a whiff of his, it was spoiled too. Well now all we wanted to do was get out of there, but to snag a waitress took another nearly 15 minutes. When we did (and it wasn't even "our waitress") she took the plates back to the kitchen and came out and asked us what we'd like to do. Did we want more salmon (uh, no, probably won't want salmon again for a long, long time). Would we like coffee?? No, thanks. We simply got up and left. There was no heartfelt apology. They didn't offer a free meal to make up for the poor one. Oh, and the corn that came with the meal - I tasted that while we were waiting for a waitress to take our bad fish- and it wasn't all that good tasting either.

So now a friendly family restaurant, run by local people has apparently gone downhill in quality of food and even worse in quality of service.

We ended up getting frozen pizza at the grocery store and heading home. We'll try again this weekend. We certainly have learned our lesson about not going out on St. Valentine's Day without a reservation. But it clearly was not our night! At least we were able to see the humor in the situation. The only problem is that we have weeks and weeks of Lent left (and we've given up meat for Lent) and I don't think I can face another piece of fish for a long, long time.