Restaurant Rant

I am probably not the world's biggest fan of sit-down restaurants. That may reflect lingering traces of my formerly dominant antisocial tendencies. I don't like settling the bill, and I don't like placing my order or assuring my server that I'm "still working on that" and that they need not "get that out of my way". Honestly, I find it to be the case fairly seldom that the increased price over a 'fast food' restaurant ensures that I receive a meal of a distinctly greater caliber. Mark Twain is reputed to have said of a restaurant that the food was terrible and the portions too small. The contradiction he relates would be humorous to me if I didn't find it to be the case nearly everywhere I seem to go. Of course, were I the cook and the kitchen my own, I could hardly hope to surpass even the low bar established, but must I relent in my criticism on that account?

Astoundingly difficult for even professional cooks is none other than the incredible edible egg. I do not trust myself to cook it in any other style than scrambled, and I am rapidly losing faith in the ability of restaurants to do any better. I'll certainly concede that when I order hard-boiled eggs at a Denny's, that's really my own fault. I think I do not deserve a substandard breakfast when I order my eggs poached at a restaurant of much greater reputation, and this has happened. Am I to be blamed for taking it poorly when eggs over easy go awry? There's just so much a man can take. Interestingly, I've never really been disappointed by omelettes or the like. Perhaps I must grant the restauranteur the allowance of disguising the eggs which vex him so with bacon, cheese, peppers and onions.

The last of those egg incidents took place recently. My Toastmasters club has employed the restaurant guilty for that offense as a meeting place on a few occasions. The frequent crime of their waitstaff has been an inability to grasp that the proper time to rush in like a mad bull- taking and delivering orders at the top of their lungs- is not while a speaker addresses the club from the lectern. A fresh outrage took place on this occasion in addition to those two: After most of our party had departed, leaving myself and two others, the waitress came over with the grievance that a cup of coffee had gone unpaid for by its now-absent orderer. We earnestly sought to clear up the matter, determining that the money had in fact been left on a table. She was not to be placated permanently, however, as she returned with the same complaint on a grander scale: she insisted that we had ordered five cups of coffee altogether in spite of the fact that we hadn't had that many people actually place orders at all. Ultimately, we were able to persuade her.

If there's one thing that's sure about me, it is that I am my parents' son. I may not exhibit all the qualities of both, but I do exhibit many of each. In such cases as this, the salient resemblance is to my mother, who most assuredly bears a grudge against transgressive businesses. I do as well. A contentious exchange with a convenience store clerk regarding the denomination of bill I handed him to pay for something resulted in a months-long boycott on my part. Ultimately I relented. This restaurant, to its undoubted chagrin, possesses nothing to test my resolve like a hot dog of the kind that other place makes, and so when I said to myself that I don't plan on returning anytime soon, you can be sure that I will stick to that if I can at all help it. I don't care how many photographs of celebrities they have on the wall: none of them depict the celebrity eating at the restaurant anyway, so really deceit may be added to their list of things to answer for. I'll be glad to eat elsewhere.