Restaurant Silliness
A friend on LJ, Howlin' Wolf, posted a question if you'd ever sent a meal back at a restaurant. I have on a few occasions. Wrong food, or badly done. One time at an Asian restaurant I ordered my regular dish and the kitchen put the absolute wrong spice on it for whatever reason, completely incompatible. And yes, I sent it back as it was inedible! I got back the correct dish.
Anyway, I told HW that I had a funny restaurant story to post that I'd put up later as I was pressed for time this morning. And I did post it in reply. And decided I'd make it a normal journal post. So here it is.
*****
There's a premium steak house in the USA called Ruth's Chris Steak House, I have no idea what the origin of the name is. My best friend's boyfriend was a really, REALLY high-paid IT guy and took her, me, and another friend out to dinner there once. This is a place where every single dish is charged, you dress nice, and it's going to run a minimum $100 a head. I don't think we had any alcohol, still, wouldn't surprise me if we topped $500 for the four of us.
As we're leaving, I tell the others I'll catch up with them. I stop at the hostess station and in complete deadpan ask for the manager. They say she's not available and ask if they can help me.
I say, again, complete deadpan, that at no time during our dinner did any of the wait staff come up to our table and interrupt our conversation while we had food in our mouth. The poor girl was absolutely shocked, having read my tone of voice rather than what I actually said. The manager, from across the room, saw the girl's reaction and came over, asking if she could help.
I repeated it in the exact same tone of voice. She laughed. I added, 'But seriously, the food was marvelous, the service impeccable. We had a great time. Please explain it to the poor girl, she didn't hear what I said.'
Yes, my D&D alignment is Chaotic Silly.
*****
I pulled up their Wikipedia entry to find out the origin of the name, and it was pretty much what I expected, and pretty boring at that. The original steak house was the Chris Steak House. A woman named Ruth bought it, but the condition of sale was that she couldn't use any other name at a different location. She had just signed a ten-year lease when fire destroyed the site. Fortunately she had just bought a space that she was going to use as a banquet hall, in a week she had moved her restaurant there, and renamed it Ruth's Chris Steak House.
And so it remained.
She died of lung cancer in 2002. The chain had long since been franchised before then. The location that we ate at in Phoenix has since closed, I don't know if they moved to another site or what. It wasn't a sufficiently amazing experience that I was planning a return visit.
Anyway, I told HW that I had a funny restaurant story to post that I'd put up later as I was pressed for time this morning. And I did post it in reply. And decided I'd make it a normal journal post. So here it is.
*****
There's a premium steak house in the USA called Ruth's Chris Steak House, I have no idea what the origin of the name is. My best friend's boyfriend was a really, REALLY high-paid IT guy and took her, me, and another friend out to dinner there once. This is a place where every single dish is charged, you dress nice, and it's going to run a minimum $100 a head. I don't think we had any alcohol, still, wouldn't surprise me if we topped $500 for the four of us.
As we're leaving, I tell the others I'll catch up with them. I stop at the hostess station and in complete deadpan ask for the manager. They say she's not available and ask if they can help me.
I say, again, complete deadpan, that at no time during our dinner did any of the wait staff come up to our table and interrupt our conversation while we had food in our mouth. The poor girl was absolutely shocked, having read my tone of voice rather than what I actually said. The manager, from across the room, saw the girl's reaction and came over, asking if she could help.
I repeated it in the exact same tone of voice. She laughed. I added, 'But seriously, the food was marvelous, the service impeccable. We had a great time. Please explain it to the poor girl, she didn't hear what I said.'
Yes, my D&D alignment is Chaotic Silly.
*****
I pulled up their Wikipedia entry to find out the origin of the name, and it was pretty much what I expected, and pretty boring at that. The original steak house was the Chris Steak House. A woman named Ruth bought it, but the condition of sale was that she couldn't use any other name at a different location. She had just signed a ten-year lease when fire destroyed the site. Fortunately she had just bought a space that she was going to use as a banquet hall, in a week she had moved her restaurant there, and renamed it Ruth's Chris Steak House.
And so it remained.
She died of lung cancer in 2002. The chain had long since been franchised before then. The location that we ate at in Phoenix has since closed, I don't know if they moved to another site or what. It wasn't a sufficiently amazing experience that I was planning a return visit.