Category: Restaurants

I go to lunch with a few of the guys at work from time to time. There are some people who seem to have issues when they go out to eat no matter where they are at.  Our friend Jim is the one in our group that always had issues. Some people bring these things on themselves, but Jim is not one of those people. Jim is always polite with the wait staff and pays attention to their questions.  There is never any confusion about what he has ordered.  But if something is going to go wrong with an order or the service, it always happens to Jim.  If anyone gets a dirty fork, it will be Jim.  If anyone has a dried lemon seed baked onto the inside of their water glass, it will be Jim.  He had these things happen when out with us.  It was like he was a magnet for bad luck at a restaurant.

Bellacino’s was a new sandwich and pizza shop in town.  The guys that I usually went to eat with during lunch at work decided to try it out.  We walked into the shop and started reviewing the menu over the counter.  If you wanted a sandwich, it looked like you could either get a half or whole sandwich.  It wasn’t clear how big the sandwiches were.  It wasn’t like at Subway where you get a foot-long or 6-inch sandwich.  They didn’t have any samples of the bread where you could easily see what the sizes were.  And unfortunately, anyone who was already eating in the store had ordered pizza.  So we were flying by the seat of our pants on what to order. 

I think it’s great that fast food restaurants hire people with special needs.  One of the places I go to regularly has a girl that washes the same place on a counter every time I’m in their store.  She never speaks but always smiles.  I’m all for programs that find places for people with limited capabilities to still contribute.  But sometimes this can create odd situations.  

In 2010, Taco Bell came out with a new promotion called the $5 Buck Box.  They promoted it as part of a tie-in with the NBA with commercials featuring Charles Barkley.  In the ads, Charles would say things like “There’s lots and lots in a five-buck box.”  The Five Buck Box was a good value with a catchy phrase and as of this writing, they still have it around.  Soon after they started the promotion, I went to Taco Bell to get one.  I was standing in line behind and older man.  When he was placing his order, he told the employee, “Give me one of those five-dollar buck boxes”.  I thought it was funny because I had never heard anyone say it that way.  Charles Barkley called it a “five-buck box” and so did I.  Everyone I had ever heard say it, said it like Charles Barkley.  But then I looked at the sign and saw the dollar sign in front of the number 5.  This old man in front of me was saying it right.  From that point on, I have called it the “five-dollar buck box”.  Other fast food places have also created $5 Buck Boxes and they also call them the “five-buck box”.  But they are wrong, aren’t they?  I think you will start calling it a “five-dollar buck box” too.

There are several restaurants close to where I live that are known for having good catfish. Several years ago, my family and I went to one of these places to eat. My daughters had one of their friends along. This restaurant has a main room toward the front of the building and a large room right behind that. The visit was during the middle of the week and there weren’t many people there. They sat us in the large back room. The girls sat in a booth near the table where I sat with my wife and son. We were the only people in this room when we arrived so there was no trouble with us sitting at two tables. This restaurant has televisions mounted in the corners of most of the dining areas. In the front room, they usually have on television showing a news network and another showing a kid-friendly channel like Disney or Cartoon Network. 

In the last month, Popeyes Chicken has introduced a new chicken sandwich.  The sandwich is so similar to a Chick-fil-A sandwich that Chick-fil-A started a small feud on Twitter.  That Twitter war got enough attention that people are flocking to Popeyes for these sandwiches in numbers large enough to create lines around their stores similar to what Chick-fil-A sees every day.  Popeyes is also selling out of their sandwiches. I decided to visit my favorite Popeyes to try the new sandwich to see how it compares to Chick-fil-A.  I also wanted to experience the cultural phenomenon of being at a store riding a wave of success.

On a recent trip with my wife to visit my youngest daughter, we ate at a breakfast buffet. When we were being seating, the waitress informed us that they did have bacon on the buffet and if there wasn’t any when we got there, they were cooking more.  Then the waitress told us that someone had “stolen” from the bacon from the buffet.  My wife was looking at the buffet as we were being seated and she saw a man getting practically all the bacon and putting it in a to-go container.  I thought it was funny that she said he had stolen the bacon instead of taking the bacon.  It made it sound like he hadn’t paid for it.