Yes, that's right. I went out and paid for a ($75!!) dinner out of pure irony. It was so good and so awful at the same time, my opinion spun into a vortex of lightning speeds, creating a giant black hole, flavorless, yet full of shrimp.
At one point in the meal, James literally yelled out, "I surrender to shrimp!" I was busy surrendering to bad service, worse decor, and the confused Indian man who got reamed out by a militant, middle-aged black woman when he walked into the women's bathroom, but didn't know enough English to get himself back out. No seriously, that happened.
When we arrived for what seemed an appropriate "Early Bird Special"-style meal at 6:30, we were told it was already a 45 minute wait. There was no going back, so we took a beeper and came up with a plan. One trip to the Gap and one piña colada later, we were on our way, so we thought, to the corporate commercialized meal of our dreams. But, oh no, this was Times Square, the shittiest of Red Lobsters that inexplicably still gets the largest crowds. We were led upstairs into what looked like a mass of herded sheep -- which they undoubtedly were -- grazing on the stair landing, and waiting to be seated once again.
Finally it was our turn, and James and I were led, much to our delight and dismay, to the windowless, ventless, generally joyless back room, where three other awkward parties awaited, yet not a single painting hung on the wall. The glare of what may have been the same heat lamps used to warm my entrée shone down directly into my eyes and cast such a strong glare I could hardly read the menu. All the better, I suppose, as I was otherwise left to vulnerably stare directly at the 16-year-old girl out on a date across the room. Not even a placemat lay on tables before us, not even a chair on the other side of the table to offer some sense of personal space, comfort or privacy.
It was at this point we began to notice the conversation of the morbidly obese gentleman to our left. He was discussing an "all-you-can-eat extravaganza" he had recently had with a former lover at iHOP, and described with adulation her ability to eat five servings of short stacks. That's 20 pancakes, folks.
I'll skip ahead through all the gory details of going through the menu and making actual food choices, though it is worth noting there was both a menu with words and a separate binder of pictures to just point at while mumbling incoherently about loving shrimp. Maybe if you could point with your drool, that would be ideal.
Whatever we ordered, it doesn't really matter. Thanks to our waiter, Jason, we didn't get forks until about 6 minutes after our first course came out. You know, Jason, it's after blunders like that when all the "I'll think about bringing it out" jokes stop being funny, and start becoming facts. Yes, Jason was a waiter of the classic NYU theater school variety, who made supposedly witty comments after our every request. Oh, you don't give refills on water, Jason? Oh, you don't say!
Throughout our hyped-up cheesy biscuits, salad and, yes, appetizer, James and I tried to muster up the courage to ask Jason for this:
We did it! Although it took two takes of uncontrollable laughter, and alienating each and every other patron in the room, we got our picture. "It's good to see you're having fun," Jason said while they all stared at our unapologetic mockery. He was probably trying to hide some shame, or maybe he just didn't get it at all. It's hard to say.
Despite the fact that this meal stretched the definition of "palatable,"James had a miserly plan to transfer his shrimp scampi onto my shrimp scampi, so as to execute at least one round of his "Endless Shrimp" refills. In the end, we were left with a lot of food that we didn't really ever want to see again. But we didn't let that stop us from all the fun of carrying out leftovers!
We took their gloriously branded bag and Styrofoam out to the streetz, to show off our accomplishments in front of all the banality of Times Square.
But don't worry! James got in on the fun too, on the L train home to Williamsburg:
You're LOLing in all of these pictures. Stunning. And I can't believe you paid that much money to eat a Red Lobster. You've crossed the lines of irony, clam.
ReplyDeleteno such thing.
ReplyDelete