February 03, 2003
Worst. Restaurant. Ever.

Dateline: Edmonton (Part II)

I'll post a roundup on the rest of the Edmonton trip soon, but last evening deserves its own post.

So Tim, Wendy, War, Grant, Ben, and I head out to our last Edmonton dinner. We have lots of time, and War invites along one of his friends and his wife. Tim lives in a pretty nifty area, with restaurants all over the place, and for some reason he hasn't tried near half of them. So we decide to try a place a block away called EastBound. Good decor. Asian themed food. Sake bar. Looks nice.

Big mistake.

Things begin reasonably well, as we are the only people in the restaurant and have the hostess' full attention. We had some wacky Sake drinks and all was going well. Then for some reason she took appetizer orders without taking the main course orders. Weird, but whatever. Also, in what would turn out to be a bit of devilish foreshadowing, they had a single Diana Krall song on loop. It just kept playing over and over and over, as if willfully ignorant of the march of time.

The appetizers came pretty quick... but this was the last we would see of our intrepid hostess for a long time. We talked for a while, and then began to fidget. Necks were craned, coughs were *ahemed* to no avail. Then, finally, over an hour after we arrived in the restaurant, she took our orders.

But our magical journey is not done yet. Now begins the period I refer only to as: "The Wait". It consists of alot of people dredging the barrel for conversation topics, participating in uncomfortable silences, sighing heavily and gradually getting very annoyed, all overlaid by elevator-class jazz. This is what violent breakdowns are all about.

After another half hour or more, the sushi arrives. Which would be great, except only four out of the eight of us ordered sushi. The rest of us are told our food will be "right out". Which is a lie. A very big lie. We wait another half hour, and nothing. Tim and Wendy complain, which is met with a lot of apologies, but no food. The hostess promises us free salad. I say "No thanks, but we would like our food."

Around 8:00, two-and-a-half hours after we entered the restaurant, two plates of cooked food come. One of the plates is purportedly mine, the Thai Udon (it later turns out that it was not mine, and was rather Wendy's). Ben's food isn't there, and he has to be at the airport in an hour. At this point, we just say 'screw it'. Wendy negotiates for all our main courses to be free, and we just get out of there. Before we leave though, we are given the remaining two meals bagged. In Japanese Village bags.

So that was the evening. Never go there. Never never never.

Posted by savidant at February 03, 2003 08:25 AM
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