Thursday: Good Food, Bad Service, Some Rain

I haven't posted anything today and I suppose I should, lest I fall behind again.

Thursday lunch I returned to the dingy Cuban restaurant near my apartment. Despite the fact that it only had six tables and a counter, it was hard to get attention and get a menu. I think it's because I wasn't Cuban. (Almost everyone there was. It's also amazing to see the wide variations in skin color from people with Cuban ancestry.) I got a really good thin (strip?) steak with lots of grilled onions on top. And a bad salad (that did have some beats) and some orange (!) saffron rice and black beans. But the steak was cooked excellently, still juicy and everything. Then I waited around to pay, and waited, and waited. Seemed like people didn't want me there (no attention) but didn't want me to leave (no attention)! Eventually I walked to the cash register by the room and stood there and a little later the waitress came over with my bill. One dollar tip. Maybe there should be some rule that says if you don't get the bill within x minutes of eating (or even anyone checking in on you or taking your plate away), you should be allowed to leave without paying.

I'd hoped to play ultimate (for the first time in New York) Thursday night. Sadly, they were predicting thunderstorms. Since I was already planning on leaving earlyish, I left earlyish and explored a bit in a area that had a high subway density (so if it started raining then I could get home easily). I didn't get very far into midtown -but did manage to see briefly a Dido concert in a park two blocks from my office, and walked down the diamond street that has probably 60 diamond and jewelry dealers on it (I know because I counted the stores on one side `cause I knew no one would believe be on that large a number of stores)- before it started to rain.

Heading home, I ordered the fried green tomato sandwich at The Tomato Restaurant (discussed in a previous post). The sandwich was pretty good; the fried green tomato was tempura-ish, but was a tomato and in a sandwich. Not that surprising. :) The bad service involved here was it took ages to get the menu (even the greeter at the door noticed I didn't have a menu and it had been a while before my waiter showed his face). Ever since reading Kitchen Confidential I've been noticing more of what times are good and bad for restaurants and how tasks are divided at various places I eat. At first, given all this and all the discussion of the difficulties of the dinner rush (usually called the pre-theater rush in the book because it is mostly set in Manhattan) and the fact that when I was seated the restaurant was really busy, I ascribed this service with the fact that waiter had too much to do. But at the end of my meal, the restaurant was half-empty and still my waiter took forever to notice I was done and check on me. (I know because I finished a chapter of the book then.)