
Yesterday morning, a day off, Glynn asks if I’d like to go out for breakfast. I wonder if this is a trick question – I do most of the cooking here and I’ve never, ever said I don’t want to go out – but he seems to be sincere, so I go with it. When he suggests The Breakfast Place, our old standard, I remind him we’ve eaten there a hundred times. And, sure, the food is always good, but never great. The prices are always low, even if they’ve recently inched up a bit. The service is spectacular, but we’ve eaten there frequently enough that the waitresses know our order when we step in the door.
(The best breakfast I've EVER eaten was made by the woman in the picture, Rachel Ruiz. And, yes, she's family and, absolutely, I adore her, but true is true. Wonderful food. On YouTube, she goes as the Gas Station Gourmet: here.)
I wanted to try The New Place, a restaurant that opened a couple of months ago. Reluctantly, he agrees (the boy finds something he likes, he does NOT like to change – which works with relationships, isn’t as exciting when it comes to eateries) and off we go. When we arrive at the New Place, the lights are on, the OPEN sign is flashing, and the parking lot is empty.
As in, there are no other cars in the front. Through the window, it appears there are no other customers, either. I look at Glynn. Glynn looks at me. “At least we’ll get good service,” I tell him.
I was wrong.
Inside, the hostess tells us to pick a spot, since all of the spots are available, so we do. The waitress appears, pours our coffees, takes our orders, and vanishes. As if she never existed at all.
We open the newspapers, one digital/one paper, we sip our coffees, we discuss life its ownself, and we wait. We finish our coffees, I fold up the Life section, Glynn turns the last page of Sports, and I discover that the hostess has disappeared, too. Thirsty and tired of waiting, I stand up in search of other life. The hostess has retreated to the other end of the building, in the off-chance that her next customer might be sneaking through the emergency exit, and I shout a request for more coffee.
I don’t normally shout in restaurants, no. But she was far away, and most restaurants I visit aren’t quite so empty.
Coffee arrives at the same time as the food, so all is better. My two chocolate chip pancakes (don’t judge) are enormous. Glynn’s platter of biscuits and gravy isn’t quite as big, which disappoints him, as he believes there is no such thing as too much biscuits and gravy. He tries a corner of biscuit, heavily doused in gravy, and says nothing. This is not a good sign.
If you want to know what Glynn is like when he gets good biscuits and gravy, go here. He acts exactly like Snuffles the dog, getting a treat from Quick Draw McDraw. Watch his face, and you can tell Glynn is (figuratively) floating in the air from joy. Not this morning. Not with this breakfast.
But he didn’t say anything, so I didn’t say anything. Instead, I took my knife to cut a wedge of pancakes. I had to use my knife, because the pancakes refused to tear under the force of my fork. Then I put them in my mouth, chewed and chewed, managed to swallow the mouthful down, and told my sweetie, “These are the worst pancakes I’ve ever eaten in my life.”
Long story shortened, we left the rest of the food, paid the bill, and went to The Breakfast Place. I’ve never done that before, paying and abandoning one breakfast before paying and enjoying a second, but it happened yesterday. As Glynn said, life’s too short to spend it eating bad pancakes.
All of which was supposed to lead in to today’s post about my other, fairly recent, bad idea, but I’ve spent too much time grumping about breakfast foods. The bottom line is, I’m doing an awful, terrible, no good job of keeping on track with the NaNoWriMo outline thingie.
More about that next week. Before I embarrass myself completely, I have a chapter to finish. Maybe.