Taking the grandkids out for a fancy pants dinner, no Mickey D’s tonight. A sit-down restaurant* where they actually hand you a menu with a kid’s menu’s and three crayons a piece for them to colour half a rainbow. ** Interestingly enough, the grandkids ordered the same meal they would have had at Mickey D’s only it cost me twice as much. I ordered the “World Famous” ribs from this Canadian food chain. Famous for what I was about to find out.
It was Saturday night and the place was busy (and noisy) so the service was a bit slow but no problem, the grandkids were busy breaking crayons and debating about how much the tooth fairy should pay for a molar on the open market. I was listening to the man at the table next to us telling his better half how he could do much better, at what I’m not sure. It certainly could have been charm.
The meal came and it looked good. My grandson said to me “I want some parmesan”. With chicken nuggets? But I’ve learned not to question the choices of an extremely picky eater, so I asked the waitress for some parmesan. “That will be $2 extra”, she said shortly but not sweetly like we were asking for a round on the house. That’s just grate I thought to myself but quickly decided that this was the wrong time to spout a lame pun that would most likely go over her head like a Pearson departure. It turns out that if your meal isn’t pasta then grated is not gratis. Fair enough, we are out on the town, time to splurge a bit, it just means $2 off the tip.
Now let’s talk about the ribs and their claim to global fame. They advertise their ribs as “fall off the bone”. These were more like “hang on to the bone for dear life” ribs. Or “almost as tough as the bone that the meat is adhered to with what seems like crazy glue” ribs. Phillip Marlowe and Sam Spade played by Humphrey Bogart tough.*** This rib-fest turned into a rib-fester.
I was waiting for the waitress to come by so I could point out that this particular plate of ribs would never be world famous but was about to gain a certain degree of local notoriety. However, she was very busy and never got around to asking how our meal was. Understandable.
So when the bill finally arrived, I told her that the ribs weren’t good. I was quite civil about it, and I wasn’t questioning the bill, I just thought it was something she should know. Here’s what transpired.
Waitress (very pissed off at me): You’re telling me this now? Why didn’t you tell me earlier and I could have talked to our manager and done something about it?
Me (very civil): You were very busy. You never asked about our meal or I would have mentioned it.
Waitress (even more pissed off now): I did ask how your meal was but you said nothing. Nothing.
When I hear two nothings in a row I immediately think of Hogan’s Heroes and Sargeant Schultz,**** but I didn’t think this was the right time to include that in the conversation.
Me (the picture of calm): I was waiting for you to ask so that I could tell you but you never did.
Waitress: (now really pissed off, proceeds to call me a liar): I did ask you and you said nothing.
Me: I’m sorry but you didn’t ask.
At that point I got tired of being called a liar and given shit for enduring some rough and raunchy ribs, when a simple I’m sorry from the waitress would have been the end of a not so happy meal and perhaps resulted in a tip. So I walked away, which I think pissed her off even more. But I didn’t have to or need to put up with her anymore. I guess she was having a bad day, unfortunately it was contagious.
Now I’m not about to say the name of the place, I’m not that vindictive. We are looking for Canadian restaurants these days and luckily there are lots to choose from. It wasn’t our first time there, but it was our last time.
*Editor’s Comment: In other words, licensed.
**Editor’s Comment: There are actually seven colours in a rainbow, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. So a three colour crayon set would only contain 42.86% of the rainbow.
**Reviewer’s Comment: Your pedanticism knows no bounds. I imagine at the end of your rainbow there is a thesaurus.
***Editor’s Comments: Philip Marlowe was the principal character in Raymond Chandler’s crime noir novels, including “The Big Sleep” and “The Long Goodbye” to name a few. The character Sam Spade was the creation of Dashiell Hammett in his book “The Maltese Falcon”. Bogart played both Spade and Marlowe in the movies.
****Editor’s Comment: In the 1965 to1971 sitcom Hogan’s Heroes, John Bannerman plays the sympathetic but at times clueless German Stalag 13 prison camp guard Sargeant Oberfeldwebel Hans Georg Schultz, who’s catch phrase was “I know Nothing. Nothing.” Ironically contrary to his role in the show, Bannerman was an Austrian and when Hitler annexed Austria he emigrated to the USA where he enlisted in the US Army Air Corp in 1942 and served until 1945.
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