Buzzkill
Saturday night a few friends and I rolled up on Athens Family Restaurant to throw some solids on top of our dinner of beer. It's a Greek diner that also serves burgers and breakfast, and though I'm not all that crazy about the Greek stuff there, as an admitted breakfast freak I'm all about anywhere I can get bacon and eggs at 3 in the morning.
The food more than adequately served its proper function, but when they plopped down two coffees on the table, I noticed something a little weird. The mug was cold, and so was the brew. I mean, it happens, right? But come on, we were drunk. If there's anything I need from an all-night diner, it's a piping-hot cup of the good stuff. Then my friend noticed that not only was his coffee also cold, but it had a dead fly in it.
As a former waitress, I always feel kinda bad about the pointing out of the lipstick on the coffee mug (Green Hills Noshville!), the hair under the pizza (Radius 10!) or the minty chewed gum in the salad (Caesar's!)—even a broken shard of glass in a salad once (Dalts!), but as a lifelong eater of food, I'll be darned if I'm going to pony up for tainted goods.
We notified the waitress politely—jovially, even—that the coffee was cold and there was a dead fly in it. I expected excessive apologies, light weeping, anything. (Come on, I know you've seen it all before, but at least fake that you're grossed out.) So it was fairly amusing when she responded completely unfazed with something like: "Hmm, that's weird. I'll get you a new one."
Comments
Egads, I wonder which part she thought was weird:
Posted 08/29/2007 at 03:13:52 PMThat the fly hadn't sunk?
That you were aware enough to notice?
That the fly was dead?
That you were brave enough to point it out?
That their coffee chiller was working so well?
I'm sorry. I couldn't read past "minty chewed gum in the salad."
Posted 08/29/2007 at 09:27:31 PMHow did TM know it was minty?
Posted 08/29/2007 at 10:46:33 PMI love Noshville; no one's perfect.
There breakfast is good and matzo ball soup excellent, not that I really know anything about matzo bll soup.
The salad tasted weirdly minty, and a chewed piece of gum was quickly uncovered in the mix. Sadly, the manager treated us like we'd planted it to get a free meal. Same thing happened at Dalt's.
Posted 08/30/2007 at 12:53:12 PMOh, but I love Noshville, too. I didn't really hold it against them.
Just had lunch at Noshville. The pastrami sandwich was wunnerful. And my knish was decadent. It was like a disk of mashed potatoes wrapped in phyllo.
Posted 08/30/2007 at 02:54:32 PMAthens Family Restaurant would like to apologize for this unfortunate experience. We invite the author back to the restaurant so that management can personally apologize. Furthermore, the 3rd shift staff has since been changed in response to the lack of professionalism and cleanliness we expect here at Athens. Please accept our deepest apologies and we hope to see you again soon.
Posted 09/01/2007 at 11:24:33 AM