Drive Thru! The great American past-time.

Yesssss! Vampire Diaries is coming back from hiatus and so am I! I've been living la vida brokë, restraining my wanderlust, eating from my own kitchen, saving for the holidays, and grumbling on Saturday mornings when all I want is to go try a new breakfast joint. Having just returned from bright, sunny, Texas, where there's cheap gas and a friend on every corner, I'm slowly readjusting to vampire-friendly, dark, midnight-dreary-all-day Seattle.
 I was thinking on my title, The Disgruntled Diner, who dines and then whines to the blogosphere, and found that that's not really my style. Sure, I'm a frequent diner who takes no small pleasure in dressing down the waitstaff after they've walked off, but unless my food came out cold and garnished with human saliva, I'm not taking that experience home. I want to write about fabulous finds, hot waiters, cheap eats, espresso milkshakes, you know, happy things. If a server senses my displeasure, it's highly irregular, because I've been practicing unconditional niceness in customer service environments for over 10 years. I shared my feelings with my sister, who found this ludicrous.
We were going through the drive-thru at that greasy southern gem you know as Whataburger, and I was tooting my own horn about how sensitive and sympathetic I am toward industry workers. She was quick to correct me, and basically said I'm on par with my mother's unpredictable level of impatience. So apparently, here's what's actually happening when I roll up in the drive thru lane:

Driving and whining since 1994

1. The speaker asks if I would like to try a...."No. NO. No thank you. I need JUST A MINUTE. PLEASE!"
2. When I'm ready, I bleat out my order, tack on a friendly, "YOU GOT THAT? HELLO?"and, disgusted,
3. Complete my performance by snickering at whatever desert-of-the-month is offered to me and drive on ahead. Who has time to wait for their total?
Now, you saw all the please and thank you's in that replay, right? I know. My sister's such a Johnny Drama.

In summation, I'm more likely to whine while dining. Now. Let's dish. Individual links forward to my yelp review. Mostly.


For the two weeks I spent in Austin, I was always on the go, so I drove thru a lot for meals. Sure, I was treated to sit down fancy feasts at Another Broken Egg Cafe, Snack Bar, Chuy's and Outback Steakhouse, but if I was paying, I drove thru. When I started driving back in 1997, my favorite thing to do was to swing thru McDonalds and get a soft-serve cone. Remember when they used to have chocolate soft-serve? The golden days of my youth. It was so tough to decide on chocolate or vanilla, so I'd often get a twist. These days, the option is gone, so in protest I quit Mickey D's. Amongst other reasons.
Austin kept dangling Chik Fil-A in my face, and eventually I folded. Closed on Sundays for spiritual gay-bashing and bigotry, (family time?) they serve up the best, most expensive pickle and chicken sandwich I've ever had. Not to mention those waffle fries, did they invent those? Maybe they're under the impression that they've done the world a favor with those fries (true) so of course they can tell you who to marry. All hate aside, they are open to serving gays at every location, but don't you ladies go in there holding hands and talking about curtains, cuz now you're offending their sensibilities. I guess it's time to let Chik Fil-A go too.
 

In the southern states bordering Mexico there thrives a 24-hr tex-mex chain called Taco Cabana. I'd been off the plane a good 30 minutes before I was treated to Taco C. During my first few days, I naturally fell prey to some friendly drinking and had to call my sister the next day to deliver some Tex-Mex of the gods. Last week, Bill and I drove thru the Riverside location that was curiously dark. The sparkle of one of my old favorites alive in my mind, I ordered some sopapillas to snack on before hitting up Bingo. Driving off, I opened the bag to find some cold, crusty tortilla quarters dusted with cinnsugar. Whoa. The worst Taco C experience of my life. Judge that book by its cover dear readers; if the lights are off, so are the heat lamps, so proceed with caution.  My favorite Taco C combination from way back in my veg. days is a black bean taco ($1.09) and a small chips and queso ($1.99). I open my taco, drizzle a little queso on top and chip dip that black bean bargain till it's dry. Then I roll up that soft, manteca masterpiece and dunk it in the queso till it can't dunk no more. A purveyor of many fine tex-mex platters, what they're famous for is fresh cilantro, tomatoes, an array of fresh salsas and queso so runny you want to hook it up to a hose and spray it on your enemies in a food fight. Food fight? Yes.

Coach and Aunt Vicky, 2009

 One evening around 2am  in 2009, my associates and I were enjoying some Taco C on the patio when a trio of hardened ne'er-do-wells started to attract attention a few tables away. We did our best to mind our own business, but things quickly rose to a fever pitch and it was hard not to stare. Two of their party went inside to retrieve their food, leaving the third asleep on the table. Having had a rousing night ourselves, Coach went over to her and posed for a photo, but got caught as the other two returned. At this point, the ringleader, ("Magnum" to her friends,) took umbrage with poor Coach and set to threatening him. "Leave it, Magnum!" her cohort advised, "be cool!" but Magnum couldn't be contained. Freeing herself, she leaped at Coach and the whole patio went crackers. We had just come from 80s night at Elysium so we were already sweaty and ready for a dance-off. I couldn't tell you what song was playing, but with every power chord a seemingly-choreographed punch was thrown in slo-motion and flaming Corona bottles were somersaulting through the air - giving the whole number some sweet pyrotechnic cred. We took it to the bridge and flipped their table over, just in time for our 3-in-one air guitar solo that backed them into the parking lot and sent 'em running for their Ford Explorer. Shredded lettuce fluttering to the ground all around us, we resumed our meal, having stood firm and held our turf on a hot Tuesday night at the MLK Taco C.

You know you won the food fight if you danced so hard and fast you dodged all the  ballistic edibles.

Thanks for the memories, Austin. You are missed.