Remembrance of things Pabst,

So we really have been working our ass off the last few days and I haven’t been posting very much. We had a slow day Saturday which is scary because that is our big revenue day. But when that happens we always have a very busy Sunday. It’s just the way it is and sure enough we were swamped.

So we close promptly at seven and as we are walking home the wife says “Let’s go and eat outside at one of the garden restaurants. I fell like sitting outside and enjoying the night.” Which is fine but we just have to pick the joint. We want to bring all our stuff home first so we don’t want to go on Smith St. which is in the wrong direction. So we decide to go to Luna Rosa this restaurant all the way at the end of Court St near Hamilton Avenue which is basically right under an off ramp for the Gowanus Expressway.

I might have mentioned that the last time we went there it was with my friends Tony and Ginger and we went crazy. We had quite a few bottles of wine, around ten or so if I estimated correctly. So we had a big check which Tony picked up so it was even sweeter.
Free booze always tastes better don’t ya think. Now the guy who waited on us wasn’t there this time. He introduced himself as a co-owner and I guess he takes off Sunday nights. That was unfortunate.

You see we go to the garden and the girl who seats us is Russian with a very rudimentary grasp of the English language. And it is her first day. So I try to order the wine. Finally I have to resort to pointing at the menu and saying “This one..Santa Cristina…-.Sangiovese…a bottle…no a bottle not a glass…yes that’s right…da..da...da..” There were more fucking da, da, da’s than in a Duran Duran song. So she finally nods and takes my menu away with her finger pointing at the bottle I ordered. Of course now I don’t have a menu but what are you going to do. Guess what? They don’t have that wine. Figures.

Now this young Irish kid comes over with another bottle of Chianti that he up-sells me with. The wife mentions to me that it is more expensive that the one we ordered but it was only a couple of dollars more so we didn’t care. Now the young kid was the bus boy/runner the last time he was there and now he is the only guy who knows what is going on. You see all the waiters have recently quit. I guess that they didn’t make enough tips all the way at the end of Court St. He stayed on and went from busser to head waiter. At sixteen that’s a big promotion.

Anyway he takes our appetizer order and that is the only thing that comes out right. This other Italian dude is also waiting the back garden and he took our main course order. Now I order the vegetable risotto and when the food comes it is the seafood risotto which is unfortunate because the wife is allergic and I don’t really care for it at all. I contemplate keeping it and choking it down but the wife says I should send it back which I did but which is something I never do but I didn’t want to get sick.

Now the guy is very apologetic because he actually wrote down vegetable risotto and he brings it back. What was funny is the Irish kid rushes back with the seafood risotto and puts it in front of me. I tell him “Dude I know what you did. You knew that I was supposed to get risotto and thought they forgot to bring it but it was a mistake.” He was very apologetic but it was no big deal because he was trying to do a good thing. I told it was OK because he went to Bishop Ford and that meant he was obviously retarded and not to sweat it. You see he had been waiting on this table of gay guys next to us and they had been sexually harassing him through the whole meal and he subtlety let them know he was still in high school and to back off. It was pretty funny actually. The kid was smart which will happen when you work in a restaurant. You meet a lot of assholes and you learn how to deal with them.

Anyway the risotto comes about an hour later and we have desert and what not and call for the check. It was kind of a crummy experience but that always happens when you have a great meal at a joint. The next couple of times it is never as good. But then we get another surprise.

They took the wine, the Pellegrino water, the desert and the risotto off the check. I thought they had to make a mistake and called the waiter over and he said no it was on them because of the long wait and all the mistakes. That was really, really nice of them. I mean if they just comped my risotto that would have been more than enough. They insisted on the comps so I left an even bigger tip than usual.

So we will be coming back to them soon. I mean anybody can make a mistake. Well a whole bunch of mistakes. But when you make it right you have no cause for complaint and should do what you can to encourage that behavior. So we will be back in a couple of weeks.

Maybe the Russian will have learned some English by then.