The bike lanes along the pacific ocean are gorgeous. Today, my husband and I visited his sister in Huntington Beach, and went for a nice bike ride.
The only thing I ate today before leaving the house, was a couple of celery sticks with peanut butter, so, as you can imagine, I was starving after a 20 mile bike ride, and barely hung on as we waited for a table at a restaurant for over 30 minutes. We went to Sandy’s Beach Grill, a new addition to the Duke’s restaurant group. The atmosphere was nice with the 10 of us getting a table with an ocean view. The niceness stopped there though, and the storm clouds arrived. First, no bread for the table. I’m not usually a bread person, but like I said, after the bike ride, I was starved! I was excited when the food came, as I was looking forward to the Crispy Skin Barramundi I ordered, which came with shrimp tempura and risotto, but sadly, the only thing to be found that was crispy, was in the title. To make matters worse, the fish wasn’t seasoned. That should have made me angry, but I was way too hungry to argue with anybody. Besides, after a nice day at the beach with family why would I want to ruin an evening complaining about food?
If only that were the only problem… My husband never got his steak!! His sister ordered the same dish, and she got her food along with the other nine people in our party. When I got my plate, I heard the waiter mention that his steak was overcooked, so he’d bring a new one in a few minutes. 25 minutes later, his food arrived. Unfortunately, by that time, everybody was done eating.
I’m not a restaurant manager or waiter, but if I were entertaining friends’ at my house and there was a problem, I’d try to keep my guests from starving by feeding them chips or something light, and definitely update them on the ETA of their meal. There was none of that courtesy from this restaurant. Our waiter left us with the impression that his dish would come out soon, and he never came back until he finally brought my husband’s dish.
I felt helpless. I wanted to share my meal, but we have a rule: “If the fish isn’t great, don’t share,” Bottom-line, if I want my meat and potatoes husband to start liking fish, I better not give him anything that might turn him off. I’m an optimist and a hopeless romantic and I truly believe that if I keep giving him a bite of fish here and there, he may start to enjoy it. Actually, there have been a few successful experiments in the past. He liked the fresh fish tacos we accidentally found in Maui– so much so, we went back to eat there 3 nights in a row! So, the dilemma was clear: do I offer him a piece of bad fish and ruin my dream, or do I watch him starve in agony? Although I hated to see the empty table space in front of him, I didn’t insist on him sharing my plate. He starved in agony.
