Blog Post 2 Revised

Michael Miller


Romance & Football

Monday night means Monday night football, and the legendary quarterback, Brett Favre, plays his former team, the Green bay Packers. Firepit City Grill contains around ten to twelve, large screen HD televisions, where about nine of the T.V’s have the Vikings vs. Packers game. My date and I arrive to the restaurant ten minutes before the game is scheduled to start. The hostess, without asking, assumes that we do not want to sit near the television, and begins on a bee line for an empty section of booths. As we walk I try to draw her attention away from her destination, but I failed, and we get to the booth. She turns around and notices me glaring at the collage of T.V’s. Quickly she opens her mouth and politely asks if I would rather sit near the football game.

My date and I find a comfortable seating arrangement, and are pleased with where we are seated. The hostess suddenly begins to rapidly mumble the typical introduction for every restaurant, but the only phrase of the verbal I was able to catch was, “Your waiter will be here shortly.” The hostess completed her job promptly with respect, and the waiter was quickly approaching.

As he arrives he stands hunched over with a blank face staring in my direction. I wonder subconsciously if I was supposed to introduce myself first, or just go ahead with what I want to drink. After a five second span of the waiter and me confusingly staring at each other, he proceeds with a question. Instead of introducing himself, he decides to get right into business and ask what my date and I would want for drinks. A minute rapidly passes by, and two iced cold waters are set in front of us on the table.

We have been at the restaurant for just around five minutes now, and everything that I have hoped for has successfully happened, but this seems to perfect to stay this way. The restaurant walls surround us with the beautiful diverse images all aligned properly on the walls. Looking like a shrine of bright gold, the HD T.V’s hang from the ceiling portraying the pregame of the Monday night football. The restaurant employees educationally seated us, and served us as their guest with rapid answers from our request at the beginning of the service, but that respectful manner did not stay true throughout the whole dining experience.

The appetizer arrives, and the light brown fried calamari lays helpless on a plate as it is slowly lowered onto the table. Bordering the left side of the appetizer dish, two unknown sauces sit in clear plastic containers. The sweeter sauce has an all white appearance, while my more preferred sauce lies thin with a red color. The crunchy taste of each bite of the calamari fulfills the wants of my taste buds. As I begin to hurry through the tentacles that were picked by my girlfriend for me to eat, I realize that my cup of ice cold water has turned into a cup of ice cold ice. I slowly glance around the room only to find my waiter is nowhere in sight. Continuing on with the delicious plate of fried squid, my girlfriend and I are surprised by a loud noise behind me. The surround sound speakers for the televisions were suddenly turned way up. The pleasant romantic restaurant all of the sudden turned into a sports bar for the football game. Wondering if the sound would fade at all, I still sit miserably thirsty with no water in front of me. Not as expected, the sound from the speakers stays blaring throughout the whole game. My girlfriend, Lindsey, and I find ourselves yelling back and forth at each other as we struggle to maintain a conversation. Ten minutes have passed, and I am beginning to lose my voice. The only safety tool for my throat is a fresh cup of water, and even that is far from happening.

At first, I was considering a more formal dinner such as: parmesan chicken, or an eight ounce steak, but now placed in a sports bar football game atmosphere, I decide on the buffalo chicken wings. I could not quite remember the last time I have had chicken wings. The thought of what my entree was, began to make my stomach stand tall, and a smile grow across my face. The thick bleu cheese would slowly fall off the light brown, saucy chicken wing as it approached my mouth. Each bite will only make me drool more and more as my taste buds dance in joy from each wing. Only time will hold me back from getting something I have longed for, or at least I can hope it is something I have longed for.

Receiving a sign from Lindsey’s face that the food is quickly approaching, I turn a hundred eighty degrees to see my waiter holding two plates full of luscious food. As the white bottom plate nears the table my smile slowly turns upside down. I know the famous quote, “Never judge a book by its cover,” but that is exactly what I did. The wishful thought of light brown wings sadly never came true. Instead, a black burnt coat of crisp covered all ten wings. As my hopes were falling lower and lower as each second went by, I, starving, decided to try the least burnt wing. I figured, if I soak most of the wing in bleu cheese, then that would make up for the burnt taste. Wrong again, the bleu cheese was nearly impossible to keep on the wing. By the time I would lift the chicken from the dressing, all of the bleu cheese would successfully find its way back to the container. With basically no dressing on the wing I attempt for the first bite. At that moment I hit rock bottom, the meat was tough and lacked any sort of juice. The taste gave me a sick feeling to my stomach, and I could not even finish the rest of that wing. I offered my girlfriend a wing, to see if her taste buds felt the same pain. One bite then two, and her half eaten wing was placed right next to mine. We both came to the conclusion that my entrée was not even worth asking for a box to take home to her roommate. Luckily enough for me, Lindsey could not finish her meal, so I at least got to have half of a chicken sandwich.

The sandwich was not near as bad as the wings, but I just could not comprehend why my meal fell through. Not only the meal, but the dinner itself was a failure. At first, the appearance of the restaurant brought joy and excitement to my face. As the night progressed, each initial excitement reversed into somewhat of a nightmare. The Firepit City Grill has the looks of a well rounded romantic restaurant, but when it boils down to the details, the waiters as well as the chefs fail to perform. Although my meeting with the Firepit did not go as planned, the restaurant had its highs, and showed great potential to be what I first expected. I enjoyed the peaks of success from the City Grill, but I could not stand the valleys of failure.

Firepit City Grill
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