Friday, May 1, 2009

The Adventures of Shara & Molly: Episode 174

Recently, after a trip to Anthro, Shara and I decided to get some dinner. After a few false starts, we ended up at California Pizza Kitchen. It was my first time, so naturally, I thought pizza should be the order of the day, but the idea of only pizza seemed to heavy. So, we decided we'd split a pizza and a salad. Wait, I'm getting ahead of myself.

When we walked in, there was no one to greet us. Some time passed, before Pete, a waiter and smoker, appeared to apologize for the delay, explain that they were understaffed and escort us to a table. He took our drink orders and was back in no time with a couple of Pepsis--a cherry and a diet. He then explained that he was not our waiter, but that someone would be along shortly, unless we were ready now. No we weren't. "Ok, have a good night, and try something new." See you later, Pete, thanks for the drinks. A few seconds later, (I can't remember his name, so we'll call him Rich) Rich comes by to see if we were ready, nope, still not ready, we haven't had a minute all together to look at the menu. He asks us what we were drinking, and then moved on. Shara and I then spent a few minutes narrowing down what our options were, but we were both fascinated by the shredded lettuce tossed in mayo that happened to top so many of their pizzas. "It must be good right, since it is on so many pizzas?" "No, I cannot imagine a world in which this would be a good thing, shredded lettuce tossed in mayonnaise molesting a perfectly good pizza!" "But then again, maybe it is so wrong it is right?" "Do I look that boring that a waiter is telling me to try something new? This whole restaurant is new." "I bet it is his thing."

This is one of the things that makes Shara one of the funnest people I know: when we had decided on our salad, but had still not come to a lettuce decision she suggested, "Since Pete said 'try something new' if he comes back to take our order, we'll go with the weird lettuce thing, but if Rich comes back we'll go with the other one." BRILLIANT! The pizzas were remarkably similar except for the lettuce, so decision is in the bag!

After about 14 minutes after this little bargain with fate had been decided on, a wild card: Julie came to take our order. We giggled, but were thrown for a loop. So this is where I explained the situation to (a very busy and over-worked) Julie and asked her opinion. Julie was very pro the whole lettuce tossed in mayonnaise on top of pizzas, so we decided to give it a try. A little while later, Pete was back and brought us our food and refilled our beverages. Then many, many minutes later, when we just wanted to leave, we had to flag down Rich to get our bill, which he dropped off, but someone else entirely took and processed it. We left the restaurant, said goodnight to Pete who was on a smoke break and headed to Becky's for Gossip Girl where my offers to try the left-over lettuce covered pizza were declined by many.

Apparently, at CPK, it takes a village to wait on a table, (or maybe Rich is the worst waiter imaginable?) (Also, all of that, and no one refilled my water.) I just hope they shared the tip. And you can bet your sweet bippy that I will never again order a pizza with mayonnaise and lettuce on it.

1 comment:

Britt said...

you're awesome.