A Very Bad Choice in Dining Venue

Photo by Syed Ahmad on Unsplash

We decided tonight to try a different place for dinner — a place in our neighborhood that we had noticed but had never tried. It advertises both Greek and Italian food, and I had heard some years ago that it was pretty good.

We got there when only one couple was waiting, so the hostess told us it would be only five minutes “or so” until we got a table. We sat down to wait. And wait. And wait.

The couple waiting with us finally got seated, and another couple came in from outside, and the hostess immediately found them a place. I asked the hostess, “did you forget about us?”

“Sorry,” she said and promised we’d get the next table. The place looked ok. There was a football game playing on the huge TV in the bar, pretty normal stuff.

We let the deal with the waitress go as they were having a hard time, she said and were understaffed. I never did figure out what that had to do with us being forgotten, but anyway. After another 10 or 15 minutes, she found us a table — a nice booth by the windows. We should have turned around and headed right back out the door we came in.

We had not much more than sat down before live entertainment started, a singer in a front corner, and the music wasn’t overly loud or obnoxious when we sat down.

But then the karaoke began. We hadn’t realized that right inside the restaurant was a karaoke bar. And the place started to get crowded, and the lines between the restaurant and the karaoke bar began to get smudged as the overflow from the bar made themselves at home in the restaurant.

I realized we weren’t among our people when I started seeing the MAGA stuff. Eighty percent of them just had that Trumpster look. I can’t explain it but they all kind of have a look that says they’d tie up with you if you wanted to try them. One wrong word, like, say, “Biden” or “Obama” and they’d roast you. You just know.

At first, when very bad, obviously inebriated singers started taking the mic, we laughed. Heartily. We couldn’t believe what had happened or how we had so badly judged what a place would be like. It had a lot of cars outside, and we usually think that means good food. And listen, they did have good food, once they let us have some of it a couple of hours later.