In Retrospect, Tonight's Dinner Wasn't That Bad

Elizabeth and I went to Brio's Tuscan Grille for dinner tonight. Elizabeth had prepared an elaborate early New Year's meal while Madeline and Joseph were here, featuring a $70 prime rib, and I wanted to return the favor and take her out someplace nice to eat.

Unfortunately, the restaurant was chaotic and incompetent. Our bad experience began when the hostess seated us for our 4:30 reservation at a table that wasn't staffed with a waiter until 5 p.m. Elizabeth eventually went to complain, but we waited another five or so minutes before anyone came to greet us. The poor waiter apologized and promised to make it up to us, but that was not to happen, as he immediately got a huge table of Brazilians who neither spoke nor read English. I watched our waiter spend 30 minutes just trying to take their orders.

When our tournedos arrived, we discovered that the chef had mistaken medium rare for medium well. One of Elizabeth's little filets had the consistency of a piece of charcoal. She insisted on speaking to the manager, who took her entire meal off the ticket. We were so unhappy that we left without crème brûlée or cappuccino, two extravagences we enjoy when we eat there.

In retrospect, though, tonight's meal wasn't that bad, just disappointing. My worst restaurant experience happened many, many years ago. My father had come to town and wanted to assemble and feed the family in the excessive and expensive manner that is his style. We had reservations at a steak house; I made the mistake of walking over to my grandmother's house, where my father picked us both up. I'm sure that a step-mother accompanied Dad on this trip to Florida, but which one I don't recall. We met my sister and her dick-brain first husband at the restaurant. Dick-Brain was an assistant manager at a Firestone; he met my sister Melody while selling her tires after a boyfriend's ex-girlfriend had slashed hers.

Melody and Dick-Brain had driven in from Lakeland. They arrived first and waited in the bar drinking. After greeting them, we followed the hostess to a table where the horror began.

The waitress arrived, which immediately soured my father, for he believes that men are the only capable servers. The waitress detailed the specials and began to take drink orders. My sister and Dick-Brain ordered a second round of whatever they had gotten from the bar. Dad was paying, so they planned to get smashed on free booze. This was years ago when we were all a lot younger—so young, in fact, that the waitress asked to see ID to confirm that Melody and Dick-Brain were both 21.

Despite having driven an hour from Lakeland, despite the very real possiblity that they would be drunk on the way home, die in a car crash, and need identification so that cops could call their next-of-kin, neither of them had a driver's license. Dick-Brain mentioned that the bartender had had no problem serving them.

The waitress explained that she would lose her job if she didn't check ID; Dick-Brain countered that he would just walk back to the bar when he and Melody needed their next drink. Dick-Brain was displeased because he, rather than my father, would have to pay for any future alcohol. My father growled, "Just get them their drinks," but the waitress stood her ground.

Now Dick-Brain should have apologized and ordered Cokes; it was his and my sister's fault that they didn't have their licenses, not the waitress's fault that her job had rules. Meanwhile, my father stewed; he couldn't ask to see the manager about this problem since the waitress was clearly in the right, but on his face, I could see him planning the many ways he would make the waitress miserable as the meal progressed.

We ordered our food, and while we waited for it to arrive, Dad and Dick-Brain bitched about the waitress. We were a party of six at a large round table in an intimate little room with four or five other tables of guests. Dad and Dick-Brain were loud and mean, and I could tell that their conversation was making everyone within earshot uncomfortable. I'm sure that other wait staff delivered the gist of their comments to our poor waitress.

When the meals arrived, my father found something wrong with his and sent it back. When the waitress grabbed his plate only, he insisted that she take everyone's with her because we were there to eat together, that he refused to watch everyone being polite and letting their food get cold while he waited for the return of his steak.

The waitress took away all of our dinners, fixed whatever Dad had found complaint with, and returned. My father then scrutinized everyone's dish. He found something wrong with someone's plate—maybe the bernaise sauce had thickened on the meat, maybe the vegetables looked wilted, I don't remember. He made a big production of how he wasn't going to let his family eat inferior food because a stupid waitress had messed up his initial order. He demanded to speak to the manager.

Our frazzled waitress left to get her boss. I was nauseated with Dad's behavior long before this latest outburst; dinner was irrevocably ruined. I should have excused myself and left the restaurant, but I didn't have a car, and the pair of dress shoes I was wearing would have tortured my feet during the five-mile walk home. Plus, Dad was such a tyrant. Even though I was already an adult, gainfully employed at the college, I felt like a child in his presence and couldn't stand up for myself or for the waitress.

The manager took away all of our dinners a second time. Then he served our table through the rest of meal; we never saw the waitress again. Even though we now had a male attending to our needs, my father criticized every part of the experience. Dick-Brain, who was enjoying watching Dad control the staff, egged him on.

I refused ever to eat with that group again, fabricating responsibilities that I couldn't escape when asked to join them. Melody soon after divorced Dick-Brain and moved to Husband #2, so the possibility of that particular combination of personalities disappeared. I have never since allowed my father to pick me up, insisting that I meet him at the restaurant in my own car. As I recall this meal with my father, I realize that I would rather suffer through a bad experience happening to us, as occured tonight, than watch people at my table bullying the staff.