Piss Poor Flawed Food Makes Mastication Meaningless

Okay, let's face it, restaurants have the most god-awful jobs in the industry. They could sign up for draining Port-A-Pottys and not notice a change in the quality of their job. No matter which job they happen to have, they catch crap all day.

Now, with that being said, when your business has a nice dose of D-GAS (Don't Give A Shit) there really is very little that a waitress can do to liven the place up. I wish to issue this warning. If you are eating, or plan to eat soon after reading this story, I strongly recommend you get that done and over with before continuing this story. Now that I mention it, wait an hour before diving in...

My family and I head to what turned out to be a hole-in-the-wall diner that goes by a name that rhymes with Narrows. Now I have always had horrible experiences at this restaurant chain, no matter which one I've ever been to. However, my family firmly overrules me with the glowing praise of "Cheap steaks, hells yeahs."

*Facepalm* Ladies and gentlemen, if your steak dinner is cheap, the taste isn't going to match anything remotely edible. Come on now, do you know why places like Cattleman's, Black Angus and Texas Roadhouse are so goddamn expensive? It's because their meat is the best quality they can acquire and when you pay $100 on your bill, you walk out going "Goddamn, that was expensive, but goddamn was it good too!"

We enter the building and I'm hit by a stench that is like walking face first into a wall. It's the combination of high humidity in a building that doesn't have air circulation coupled by filthy and moldering carpets and that just-a-touch of piss-poor-food-cooking. I mean, that's a special kind of Yuck right there. I couldn't believe that everyone sat down in the booth we were given and picked up their menus.

With somewhat trembling fingers I tried to find something worthwhile on the menu. As my GI Tract has a long history of doing incredibly unpleasant things with some types of food, I was leery of anything remotely capable of being greasy. Naturally, I can find nothing worth the risk and under pressure from the family, I am forced to order what my mom ordered, praying that it would work in my favor.

Prime rib with potatoes and steamed vegetables. Medium well - aka just a little pink inside.

I stabbed it with a fork and it began to bleed. Heavily. I uttered a yelp of horror, expecting it to "Moo" angrily at me and try to graze on my napkin. I had to send it back. Apologetically. Politely. But it had to go back.

The vegetables on the second plate were limp and the edges of their cuts had been turning brown BEFORE they had been cooked. The potatoes tasted like someone had mixed flour and water, molded it into a lumpy paste and then added a few spices to it in order to pass it off as potatoes. My second "steak" was medium well, but incredibly fatty. I carved off enough fat to total 80% of the "steak's" weight. I stared in disgust at the coin shaped piece of meat, then picked it up by both ends and gave it a twist: wringing it out as though it were a towel. Globules of fat popped out of the meat like a series of popping pimples, which oozed along the meat in a stream of grease until they pattered gently onto my plate. In silent horror I put it down and shoved my plate away from me.

It probably doesn't need to be said that I spent the rest of the "meal" with my arms crossed in sullen resentment that my warnings about the quality of the food had been ignored. Family members tried offering me bites from their own plates in an attempt to get me to eat, but I refused. NONE of it was edible in my mind. Only my grandma did the smart thing, which was to ask that the food that I could not eat be taken off the tab.

A prissy snob may ask; "Well why didn't you FORCE yourself to eat it? You need to learn some MANNERS!"

To which I reply: "Because 'manners' shouldn't require me to puke out of BOTH ends ten minutes later!"

Once we walked out of the restaurant, I snarled that the next time some idiot in the family suggested Narrows, I would hop in my own car and eat at the much healthier and much more edible Golden Arches and meet them later.

Was it the Server's fault? No. She only brought the food to us. Was it the chef's fault? Mmph. No, I can't really blame them either. When you start out with shit quality food, you really cannot do anything to make it palatable. No, I lay the blame on the stupid fuck who bought into the franchise, with a healthy dollop of blame on the franchise itself.

When you buy into a franchise, you take sole responsibility for the upkeep of the business. You have to buy THEIR equipment, use THEIR layout, cook food according to THEIR recipes and obtain food from THEIR distributers. However it's on YOUR head to make the business attractive to customers. The franchise name may attract customers but YOU have to work to keep them. AKA CLEAN THE GODDAMN BUILDING!

The carpet, which is supposed to have a design with a green border, was too grimy to see the pattern and the green was nearly black. Everything from the walls, to the table to the chairs, were sticky. I touched a wall and almost needed to borrow a butter knife in order to scrape my fingers back off.

This particular location had a small, walled-in courtyard with a large window situated behind our booth. At one time it may have been pretty, with a fountain and lush greenery. Now the fountain was cracked where it wasn't simply broken. Fossilized remains of plants formed a carpet of ugly, decayed vegetation on the floor and up the walls of this courtyard. And I was pretty certain I saw something create ripples in the sludgy brown mess at the bottom of the fountain.

Uuuugh. Never. Ever. Again.

May all your customers be nice,

Comments

[Code_geek]

Call the county health inspector. anonymously, if you have to, but call...

[The Last Archimedean]

OMG. That's awful.

Having worked in the restaurant industry before, I know what a good restaurant is supposed to be. The one I worked in was always clean and well-lit. You may or may not have liked the food but by Zeus we weren't going to give you a reason to complain about the hygeine.

[candieaddict]

You know, the story didn't gross me out that much. The pictures around it did. Disgusting.

That said, I think I'll be sticking to Black Angus for my steaks. Wow.

[The Last Archimedean]

After reading this I'll stick to cooking my own food at home.

[photoslave]

After reading this, I'm thanking God that I have gall bladder problems (I can barely process semi fatty foods without getting very sick.) That means that most people I go out to eat with generally pick someplace that's clean and offers non greasy low fat selections.

But seriously, report, report, report! I shudder to think how many people may have gotten food poisoning from there.

[Bored at the Bookstore]

Sounds to me as if it's time for a letter/email to the franchisor, with a copy to the local Board of Health. Usually franchise holders (my bookstore was once a franchise - one of our requirements was that we had to carry "at least two dozen small stuffed animals") have to hew to certain standards specified by the "home office", and can face some disciplinary measures if they are found wanting, especially this badly. Maybe the franchisee does have to purchase from certain vendors, and prepare specific dishes, but even poor cuts of meat can be made more appetizing, and veggies with brown edges have passed their freshness date and then some. I have to wonder about their food-handling techniques and storage facilities.

Would your family have been satisfied if you'd ordered, say, a salad with dressing on the side and a plain baked potato because "I'm not really hungry" or "I've had my ration of red meat for the week"?

[Book Baby]

Wait a minute: you had to have stuffed animals at A BOOK STORE??!! WTF idiocy was this?

[Kiddo]

Holy crap, I think I'll just stick to home cooking for the next few months. I have a question though, why couldn't you leave? Did you ride in someone else's car or were you stuck in the booth?

@Book Baby Every book store I've been in has had a selection stuffed animals for sale and often other toys as well. Is it that uncommon?

[Skittles]

I have to say it must be specific to your area that it's that bad the one in my town is wonderful. It's always clean and well lit, even the bathrooms are clean. The service is great and the food is decent. The service is especially great when the group I go with is usually 8-10 people at roughly midnight. I also have to say that working in mental health has taught me that how expensive and 'high quality' your ingredients are has little to do with the final taste and presentation of the meal. If i can take twenty dollars worth of foodbank stuff and feed 8 people a healthy and tasty meal so could the chefs at where you ate if they were any good.

[Window Cleaning Franchise]

I’ve faced the same in some restaurants falling for low price food, but I think you have faced a lot more than me. I must agree with you that if the food is expensive it has to be good and fresh.

[Avilator]

Actually, if you drain Port-a-Potties, there's less chance of some crusty ruining your day. And you can wear a mask to keep the smell down.

[www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=511162740]

I'm sort of glad I wasn't sitting with you at the restaurant. It's always annoying when someone with us is sitting in "sullen silence" with their "arms folded."

[Svantus, the Steelport Psychopath (formerly the Wage Slave Avenger)]

Someone, apparently, didn't comprehend the story.
To the OP: Wow. So, I'll be cooking at home forever now....

[Bored at the Bookstore]

@BookBaby and Kiddo...it was odd for us to carry the stuffies (actually, it was specified "teddy bears"), mostly because we're a used book store, not a place where most folks expect a lot of sideline merchandise, just used books. The franchise corp. went bankrupt years ago, and we no longer have teddy bears. We did carry Beanie Babies for a while, now we have wooden "educational" puzzles and toys and lots of book-related stiff like covers, holders, lights, and bookmarks. And a small selection of greeting cards. But mostly books!

[Humor_Me]

My mom told me she once went to a diner where she stuck a fork in a stack of pancakes and grease poured out. She sent it back and just drank her coffee instead. When I was a kid this cute little restaurant opened up near us and the short-cut to school meant that I passed by their back door every day. I guess my mom went there a few times, but it wasn't a kid-type restaurant, more of a wine'n'dine place. It was closed down shortly after a woman reached down to grab her purse off the floor and picked up a rat by it's tail instead. YIKES! For some reason my brain can't associate the name of the restaurant you went to, but I don't eat out. I think if I got a dinner like that I'd just send it back and try for a BLT instead. You'd just have to hope they couldn't mess that up.

[Nocturnesthesia]

Ugh, sounds like my experiences with Applebee's. My brother loves that shit pit, so I usually just something small and withstand Montezuma's revenge afterward. Everything there is microwaved and covered in butter. Every-fucking-thing. Even my grandmother's "Weight-Watchers" sandwich plate.