Legal Quandary

Sir, Step AWAY From the Garlic Fries

Mr. Q loves Garlic Fries. I like Garlic Fries too, but I do not like what they do to a person - that person, specifically, being Mr. Q.

Mr. Q's office had a "little" holiday lunchtime get together yesterday at Gordon Biersch. And they have Garlic Fries. I guess I didn't realize that these are more or less a West Coast phenomenon until lunch yesterday - because everyone seemed totally intrigued by them. "Ooooh...these are different. Do you eat them with ketchup?" I know I'd never seen them til attending to my first Oakland A's game, but all the West Coast stadiums I went to seemed to sell them. (Oakland, SF, Seattle, in case you're wondering. I couldn't say if San Diego, or L.A. - either the Dodgers or the Angels, whose name change is, btw, still stupid had them, but I sort of assume they would.) You can even get Garlic Fries at any Kidd Valley in Seattle.

Once again I found myself totally underwhelmed by big-chain-restaurant America. The food was merely ok - definitely not worth $10 for a Cobb salad. Mr. Q and I also split an order of the Southwest Egg Rolls, described as "pulled chicken, black beans, corn, roasted red peppers, and pepperjack cheese." It turned out that there were NO beans in this appetizer, and the texture of the chicken was really odd. I told Mr. Q that it seemed like the chicken had come out of a can - cat food chicken, if you will.

Aside from the mediocre food, the service was abyssmal. I know we stressed them out because they only had one server in our room and the people just kept coming. I guess Mr. Q's office reserved the room for about 20 people, but the number sort of expanded to 34. (Don't look at me - I RSVP'd!) At any rate, this "lunch" turned into 3 1/2 hours of sitting around making small talk because the service was so slow! I would have been more than willing to cut them slack for this if it didn't seem like they were more interested in moving tables around than taking orders. Luckily Mr. Q had a stash of pretzels, which he thoughtfully passed around to keep folks from getting too hangry.

Of course, the bottom line of this story is that because they had Garlic Fries, Mr. Q ordered them. And who is paying for this?

That's right. I am.

posted by Legal Quandary at 13:15