Berta’s sister, Mary Ann, and Mary Ann’s husband, Ryan, came to visit over the weekend. On Saturday night we took them out to Buca di Beppo, a local chain restaruant that serves mainly Italian dishes, family-style.
To avoid the 35-minute wait for a table, we elected to eat outside. The outdoor tables were on the shady side of the building, and the temperature was dropping as the sun dipped below the horizon. It was still in the upper 70’s with decent humidity, but much better than it had been outside all day, and probably worth avoiding the wait.
We sat down and placed our order - a small plate of spaghetti, a baked pasta sampler, and a small plate of chicken marsala, along with some garlic bread and a small salad. We had our drinks pretty soon, and our salad and bread was delivered in short order.
We waited a while before a waiter made an appearance so that we could get more plates for the kids. Apparently, our two kids didn’t register when we said “six for outside” and were seated at a four-person table. We were also missing some silverware and napkins. When the waiter (not actually a waiter, but an expediter) brought some extra napkins, he dropped them on the table in the puddle he had left from spilling Ryan’s water, rendering them completely unusable. Oh, but it gets better.
Our salad was plated onto a dish fresh from the washer, so it lasted even less long in the outdoor heat. The same thing could be said for our personal salad plates. We waited for a while for our main dishes.
A long freaking while. In the middle of this time, some (not all) drinks were refilled, and our waitress told us that dessert would be on them tonight. I wondered about whether they would be willing to pay for the dessert we had planned to take at Milky Way Farms.
Here’s a small detail that I need to interject here in the timeline. Shortly before our actual waitress showed up with our food, a couple of the restaurant staff came out onto the patio. One was carrying a clear container filled with what looked like cleaning rags floating in some soapy solution. Since everyone else had already cleared out of the outdoor patio (yes, it took so long to get our food that everyone else had eaten and left already), they set this square bucket on the table behind me. I supposed that they would be cleaning up the cleared tables.
Shortly thereafter, our waitress came with our three large dishes and set them on the table. Immediately after the dishes were set out, I felt a spray of water on my arm, something like a spray bottle set on mist. Abby, on the other side of the table, looked around the sky and said, “Is it raining? I felt water drops.”
“I’m wet,” I said. The waitress looked confused, as if to ask, “How could it be raining if the sky was clear?”
The girl behind me with the bucket said, “That might have been us.” I saw her there with the other worker. He was holding a white shirt, like the uniform of the restaurant, and it was drenched with water.
I wasn’t sure how to react.
Mary Ann said, “I don’t know if I want to eat that if that water sprayed over the table.” This sentiment was clearly carried throughout our party, although by this late hour our stomachs were telling us that we had other needs.
We ended up eating the food rather than waiting another hour and a half for it to be re-cooked. And with the professionalism of this staff, I wouldn’t have been surprised if the ten-minute guarantee for the replacement of our food was simply based on her ability to make a return trip from the kitchen with the food already on the table.
During our dinner, we were witness to several employees coming outside to talk on their cell phones. One even came outside to smoke. At one point, a man in a kitchen uniform came outside, looked around, and said something quite derogatory toward the guests in general (though exactly what he said escapes me at the moment).
Our waitress informed us that the whole dinner would be “on them”. Well, ok.
Why did we never see a manager? Why didn’t the manager tell us this? None of this (as far as we knew) was the waitress’ fault, so why did she bear the burden of telling us? Why was no explanation offered?
I believe I saw the manager at one point while we were waiting for our dinner. She stopped at several other tables to ask how things were. She didn’t ask us. I suspect she already knew.
