The wedge that wouldn't leave

Last night a small group of us celebrated Patrick's 32nd birthday. Kevin, New-Guy-Derek and his wife Laurie and myself had dinner with the old man at Lone Star Steakhouse. It wasn't super busy, around 7 on a Sunday night, so for this odd phenomena (sing it Jen!) that I am about to explain to happen, it's just...funny.

If you're not familier with the Lone Star menu, I will give you a brief rundown of their salad options. When one orders a steak, they have their choice of either a house salad with various dressings to top it, or a wedge of lettuce covered in bleu cheese dressing and chopped tomatoes. Indeed, the picture in the menu made it look heavenly. And of course, as I am always up to try something culinarily different, it seemed nice to try something new.

The other four boring people at the table had 'normal' sald, but I took one for the team and orderd the everlasting wedge. I should state right here that in the picture, the visual image does not do justice to just how large this damn thing is. When they delivered my greens, I knew I was in for a task unto which even Beowulf himself would have just "Screw it!" and let Grendel eat the village. I really wish I had brought my camera so I could give you sight into that what had laid before me. It really was a really big wedge of lettuce.

And a big wedge it was. A full quarter of a large head of iceberg, with the core removed is what they placed in front of me. To be fair this wasn't a bad dish, it was washed and dried, and tasted very delicious, but just way to much for a pre-meal salad.

Anyway, back to why this was supposed to be a humorous post in the first place...

Our waiter came back eventually and picked everyone's salad remains BUT mine. I had thought that maybe he was just busy, might have missed it, to much in his hands...whatever reason to miss it. I didn't give it serious thought at first and we were all talking geek speak, boring Laurie I'm sure, just having fun, general dinner table conversation. Our drinks were refilled, our meal came and placed in front of us, and STILL the waiter and other staff that came by never picked it up or took it away. Even with a gentle prod of the plate whenever waitstaff would pass by did nothing to get the wedge away from me. When they picked up our dinner plates I was sure they would get the cursed dish away from me this time. "Ney ney" I say. The dish stayed by my side.

When it was time to pay the bill, I even went so far as to place the tab book under the edge of the plate, so that it would fall with a "thunk" when our waiter took it, but to no avail... the wedge remained and our waiter remained unawares. Before we left, I finally had to ask they guy why he never took it. He stared at me blankly and was told the he must have just 'missed it' over the course of the ENTIRE FREAKIN' MEAL. Derek and Pat come up with the theory that there was a betting pool back in the kitchen to see how long they could keep that stupid piece of lettuce on the table before one of us spoke up. He had to know something was up, as we would bust out laughing everytime he passed by, and we know this as he actually asked why we did this. None of us wanted to give it away just yet, so we kept in on the down-low, as the kids these days say. But come on. How do you actually miss an oval plate with what would have been a full 1/8 of a head of lettuce on there? Especially over a one hour period?

All in all we had fun. Patrick escaped being sung to, even though two other people there at the restaurant failed to do so. We tried to be on our best behavior around Derek's wife, but I'm afraid our more base male humor came through (really must watch that in the future). Pretty fun night I would say. Now if I could only start making money like a Risk Analysist I would be sitting pretty. ;-)

I just got my free ice cream maker in the mail on Saturday and I'm about ready to try it out. Thinking Mint Chocolate Chip should be first... Hmmm, yup. Think so.