Nachos vs. Chips

After hearing about a drool inducing, new-to-me burrito place over and over and over on Twitter, I finally went this week with a friend who’d never been either. We were going to have so much fun, eating YUMMY food, we just knew it.

The man behind the counter charmingly greeted us. We told him Twitter sent us, it’s our first time and we needed to know what we should try. He insisted that just because it’s a burrito place, we don’t have to get one, all the items on the menu are as tasty as each other. Steak nachos for me, steak quesadilla for my friend.

I have a thing for food, particularly the kind that I didn’t cook, and I’m a stickler for good service. Excellent service is better, but I’ll settle for good as a minimum rank. Give me lousy service and you’ll likely hear about it from your manager if you didn’t get the message from me (because you weren’t around to tell, not because I’m shy, or maybe because I didn’t want to embarrass you by putting you on the spot; yeah, I’m not mean, usually). I’m even known for making friends with people in the service industry. Friendly enough that we trade phone #’s, I set them up on dates (one got engaged because of me), we have them over for Game Night, exchange Christmas cards, and give each other gifts. You know, like, REAL friends. I’m not one of those crazy ladies that servers draw straws to see who has to deal with her. Remember my salty-goodness story? That flight attendant dug me.

For example… we ended up with a new-to-us server at my favorite restaurant recently. Bless his heart and all, but he wasn’t very good that night. Instead of admitting that he didn’t know what I was talking about when I ordered off-menu (the kitchen staff & other seasoned servers are familiar with it, I’m not completely When Harry Met Sally-esque), he kept saying, “Absolutely!” I even told him the ingredients, “Absolutely!” It was delivered without grilled chicken, peas, and mushrooms. Basically, not at all what I ordered. Ben asked for spinach (“Absolutely!”), got broccoli. We were fine (mine was fixed) but have a new saying in our house when we don’t know what the other person is talking about… “Absolutely!”

Back to my Nachos. As I kept picking up naked chip after naked chip (just chips, no cheese or anything on them) and setting them aside in their own little nudist section of my plate, the guy came up next to me and asked how my nachos were. Mind you, I said this kindly with a lift at the end of my words, like they were skipping down the sidewalk on a lazy summer day, “I should’ve ordered the burrito because (rifling through the nudist section) look at all these naked chips.” Because he was standing next to me and I was doing a Vanna White with my food, I didn’t look at him as I spoke so I didn’t see his face or realize until I turned that he

WALKED AWAY.

O_O    >_<    O_O

(that’s a wide, open-eyed look followed by a blink and another wide, open-eyed look)

Yes, without a reply, gesture, or acknowledgement of my predicament, he turned around and left. Gone. Sayanara. Adios. Ariversdirty (my dad’s phonetic version of goodbye in Italian). Had he stayed there for us to converse about the ordeal, he would’ve heard me say how much I enjoyed the flavor of the food, the steak is a lovely smokey goodness and easy to eat because it’s cubed, but that next time I would like to see better spreading of the cheesy goodness and avoid the nudists. I have a thing about equal opportunity cheese love. Yes, it’s a thing. (The quesadilla had little cheese and not all of it was melted; but it was loaded with steak.)

My friend and I did the O_o look and laughed at the awkwardness of what just happened. We speculated that he might return with a burrito (it was my first time and I told him how I’d be Tweeting about our experience) or at least some cheese or salsa for the nudists. But he never came back. EVER. Just vanished. Well, not really VANISHED like in the Keiffer Sutherland movie, because we could see him behind the counter helping more customers have partial nudity nachos. Oh, and yeah, when we were there it was completely dead so there’s no excuse that it was too busy to handle my dilemma. It was just so Twilight Zone.

Then we speculated that I hurt his feelings, made him cry, or that he quit his job on the spot and sped away distraught with plans to leave the country and hide out in Mexico. I don’t know. I have a wild imagination. Plus, HE WALKED AWAY!

Don’t ask me what I think if you don’t really want to know or can’t handle the truth. Because I tell it. The truth. It’s all I know how to do.

P.S. I tweeted a little about it with my friends who knew I was there, but I didn’t tag the restaurant or bash on it because I think it was just a fluke thing because the food (minus the nudists) was tasty and I’d go there again… with an extra bag of cheese in my bag, just in case.