A romantic evening? You be the judge

Ok, so I know it’s not Valentine’s Day…it’s a month later, but I just had to write about our exciting night on the town. Adam and I never go out any more. We sometimes take Harrison out to eat, but that doesn’t really count since it is 10 times more stressful than just eating at home. Chuck and Amy were so kind and offered to babysit so that we could actually get a night out and on Valentine’s Day even! I’m not really the romantic type, but I figured it would be a good night to go out and enjoy a great meal without our loveable but sometimes demanding child.

We were in Pella (for the Daytona 500 race the next day, of course) so we thought it would be fun to try the new Latin Bistro that everyone was raving about. We didn’t have reservations, but we thought we would have fun just hanging out and waiting. To our surprise the waitress said it would only be about 20 minutes-score! The entry way was pretty funny-half of it looked like the entry way at Dublin Bay; dark lighting with the babbling stream and rock garden. The other half looked like a photo station ant prom; you know trellis with flowers, vines, and white Christmas lights. An odd combination that you typically wouldn’t notice unless you were sitting there for 45 minutes to an hour. Yep, 20 minutes easily turned into an hour and we were still waiting. We figured, oh well, we have a babysitter might as well keep waiting. Then the most frustrating part of the evening happened. Another couple walked in and asked for a table, I heard the woman say “No Reservations” and guess what…they were immediately ushered in and sat down. WHAT??? The hostess was not at the front when they entered and another waitress took them to what I can only imagine was our table that was finally ready for us. Well, they finally figured out what had happened-due to my staring them down and making the hostess come and talk to us. She tried to avoid eye contact with me for quite a long time. Some how she found another table that was open-I’m not sure why we hadn’t been seated at this particular table 45 minutes ago, but at this point I was starving and just ready to eat so we took it without another complaint. Well, to summarize a particularly dreadful evening-it only got worse from there. Here are some highlights:
-No service or drinks for at least 10 minutes.
-Anytime we wanted to order we pretty much had to grab someone by the arm and ask for our waitress
-Appetizer was cold by the time it came out-we talked about just getting up and leaving at this point, but realized everyone in the restaurant could tell them who Adam is and where his parents live-damn Pella.
-Music was interesting, best song was about a vasectomy…the chorus went a little something like this “snip, snip, I got a vasectomy”.
-Adam asked for a refill-I don’t think he got it until we were leaving
-The food was terrible. I was craving a steak-I am positive that I could have made a better steak, the guy next to us commented that it was “great if you enjoy eating shoes”.
-The ran out of most of the side dishes that came along with your meal so we got a double helping of mashed sweet potatoes. They were also out of the brown sugar and cinnamon that was supposed to be served on the potatoes-they were not good at all.
-Forgot our garlic bread-she finally brought it out when we were completely done eating and it was just two slices of bread that were thrown on a stove for a minute.
-Adam ordered shrimp with his meal; the menu said four-he only got three.

It’s been about a month so I am sure I am forgetting a few things, but you get the general idea. I commented to Adam that it was a good thing I am pregnant and wasn’t having a few glasses of wine, or maybe that would have given me the courage to walk out and refuse to pay for the terrible food/service. On the plus side they didn’t charge us for the three pieces of shrimp or Adam’s drink, and they sent me home with a complimentary piece of cheesecake. The cheesecake was pretty good, in fact I might even recommend it-just don’t forget to take a few minutes to pick out all the plastic wrap that had been used to store it. Delicious!