A Restaurant Adventure

When we leave the house to go somewhere,  we tell Maggie, "We have to go to the store.  Maggie has to stay and be a good girl."   This is the pitiful look we get every time! Maggie feels left out and wants us to know she's been wronged - poor Maggie.  Our punishment for leaving her is that we find she's been in the trash in the bathroom (you'd think we would have learned to close the doors by now) and has chewed tissue and other assorted items and left them all over the floor.  "Take that" her look says.  

Yesterday, between the heavy cloudbursts, we went to lunch with the ladies visiting from Nevada.  We went to a Vietnamese restaurant where they make excellent Pho noodle soup.  It was a perfect day for a hot bowl of soup.  We've gone there often and felt it was a safe bet for taking someone to lunch.  WRONG!!

To begin with, the waitress (whom I think was the owner) came to the table and offered to bring us hot ginger tea to "warm you up."  OK, we all agreed that was a good idea. (Mind you, the whole scenario is played out in broken English.)  She came back a few minutes later with the cups and asked if we wanted hot water because it was cold.  I said yes, thinking she was talking about the tea water. Judy also thought that was what she meant.      She then brought me a glass of hot water to drink.  We all kinda stared at it and started laughing.   Then she came back with the tea pot and poured our tea.  It was brown and cloudy and not like any ginger tea I'd had before, but it was hot, sweet, and gingery.  After a cupful, Roger read the tea bag - Green Tea.  She must have added ginger in some form to the green tea - hence the cloudiness.  Of course, the tea would have caffeine.  Rog said he could feel it almost immediately.  Then things got really fun.  

Judy wanted B2 - a seafood stew.   "No, no, no good - you want B14.  Is same thing."  Judy was a bit stunned and sort of agreed, but not really.  

I ordered the vegetable Pho from the front page - build your own soup.   "No, no, you want V3 (or whatever it was) - is vegetable soup."   OK.  

Roger ordered something with vegetables and noodles but not the soup.   She had no comment about that.

Betty ordered Spring Rolls but hadn't decided on what else.  The waitress took off saying she would put our order in and be back.  Now, she has not written anything down at this point.   We wait.  We wait.  Betty finally decides to go find her and order the rest of her meal.  After hunting the waitress down (she was in the back somewhere), Betty asked for whatever it was she wanted.  The waitress asked her if it was to go.  After explaining, no, it wasn't, I'm with the party at the corner table, the waitress said OK.  

After a while the meals started coming.  First Judy's showed up.  She got a shrimp Pho with rice noodles.  She told the waitress that's not what she ordered.  The waitress argued with her pointing out that she had agreed to the change.  At this point Judy capitulated and took the soup rather than create more of a scene. 

My soup came.  It was vegetable broth, I think.  It had the vegetables and rice noodles, but it was full of tofu, which I don't like. (It's a texture thing.)   I told the waitress I had ordered the vegetable soup without tofu.  "No, you order this."   

Then Betty's spring rolls came.  No meal - just the spring rolls.   

Then Betty's meal came and it was what she ordered and she said it was very good.  

Roger is still waiting on his meal at this point and we are all curious as to what he's going to end up with.    The waitress then brings me a bowl to put my tofu in.  

Roger gets his meal.  It's some kind of noodles in heavy soy sauce, a couple of pieces of broccoli and lots and lots of tofu pieces.  Not what he thought he ordered.  She argued again and Rog capitulated and kept it. 

Now, by this time, we are totally embarrassed to have brought someone there for a meal, but we are all laughing so hard at the situation it became an adventure.  

At some point I asked for the bill.  It didn't come and didn't come.  Roger finally got up and went to the counter and it took the guy there about 10 minutes shuffling through orders to find ours.    Roger paid - and left no tip.   The whole thing was just so unbelievable.   Obviously we won't take anyone there in the future and we won't go back again.  

By the time we got out of there Roger said his blood pressure was on the rise.  The caffeine, the salt in the meal, and the general craziness of the situation.  Sure enough, when he got home and took it and it wasn't pretty.  

We got a nice email from Judy this morning thanking us for lunch and saying that what fun lunch could be when you don't get what you ordered.   Oh, yes!!

It cleared up just after dinner.  The clouds broke and the moon was full.
Santee got 1.2 inches of rain in the 36 hours of rain.

It was so nice this morning to see sunshine!