Wednesday, January 17, 2007

My veto list


I love eating out. I'm not too fussy of an eater either. I'll eat pretty much anything besides mustard. I'm not too fond of black olives either. But other than that, much of everything else is fair game.

Eateries fall into a number of categories - with the scale being "I absolutely love this place, it's one of my favorites" to "Veto List."

Restaurants appear on my Veto List for a number of reasons. Currently, 4 establishments or chains reside on my Veto List.

1. Chili's - Life is too short to have to eat at Chili's. My final Chili's dining disaster was in Harlingen, TX, after which I vowed never to return.

2. Qdoba - I pronounce the Q "hard," though I'm told it's correctly pronounced like a "Cu" as in "cut." Regardless, I always used to go there with high expectations, and leave entirely unsatisfied (unlike McDonald's, for example, where I enter with low expectations, and those low expectations are met). Chipotle and Baja Fresh are similar and both better than Qdoba.

3. Brasserie Jo - We went there in December 2005 after a winter concert at Symphony Hall, and the bartender was a complete and utter prick to us and to others. It could not have been more blatant. If that's his "schtick," that's very sad. Too many good places to eat in Boston. Not to mention a lunch I had there in June 2005 which was far below average. Bad food and pricks behind the bar, no thanks. Veto.

4. Laurel - It's too bad Laurel is on my veto list, but it is. The food isn't too bad. This was my friend's cash-money bring-a-date place, and the bartender knew him here very well. That same bartender - Errol I believe - is proudly Welsh. I am proudly ignorant about Wales. Well, not proudly, but I just am. We had a loud and vocal argument after many cocktails on his watch about the Welsh language (I didn't know they had one) why they had it (apparently you lose your language, you lose your soul, I'm told) and whether or not Wales was a country (I completely insulted him by insisting Wales was not a country, it was part of the UK similar to how Connecticut is part of the USA, and there were no delegates from Wales in the UN). I gave him a good tip and walked out. Forever. Laurel - done, veto.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I worked at a Chili's for two days, as a cook. The unholy level of health code violations I saw in the kitchen made me leave and vow to never return to a Chili's again for any purpose.