As a number of my friends have discovered, Forrest, our favorite manager at the Texas Roadhouse in Chantilly has moved to Roanoke, VA to manage the Flat Rock Grill by Valley View Mall.
Consequently, our group decided to go to Coastal Flats, which has always treated us well in the past. Our problem, however, was that we decided to go at lunch time. To Tysons Corner. At the mall. On a weekend. On the first nice 60 degree day after people had been iced in their homes.
“Hi, welcome to Coastal Flats. How many are in your party?”
“Three please. Non-smoking. Very non-smoking.”
“Name?”
“Homer. Homer Simpson.” She blindly typed it in without question.
“That’ll be able 15 minutes, is that okay?” asked the hostess as she offered a pager.
“Are those long minutes or short minutes?”
“60 second minutes, she said confidently.” While not intending to deceive us, they were, in retrospect ‘long’ minutes. But, being a good judge of lines, I decided to have fun with the situation and left the store to see how Bristo was doing for seating.
I approached the hostess station. “Hi there, how long before you can seat three people, non-smoking?”
That hostess looked down, consulted her iconic map of seating locations, and said “I can seat you now if you’d like.” She started grabbing menus.
“No thanks, I was just curious.” And I walked away, leaving her in a state of slight confusion.
Bristo has good food, but they tend to also have louder than normal music on occasion, which drowns out conversation. Additionally their bar is filled with heavy smokers, and this mixture of toxic air-born flavors whiffs out to their patio area as well as to tables behind the bar. Unless you’re sitting in the back, the experience can be quite miserable. The only free table, which we were about to be placed, was right behind the bar; otherwise I would have taken the offer.
So, I returned to Coastal Flats again.
“Hi again,” I announced, “I’ve been traveling close to the speed of light for the last few minutes; has it been 15 minutes at your end?”
She looked down for Homer. “Nope. You still have a few in front of you.”
“How many?” I asked, peeking over at the screen.
“Not that many…” she replied, though I was not to be moved aside so easily.
“Not that many?!? You had to scroll through two screens. I saw you hit the page down button.” This observation got the second hostess to smile. “Do you take bribes?”
“No, I’m sorry, we don’t” replied my hostess in sincerity.
“Well you should. You haven’t even heard how much it is yet. Consider, if you just have one bribe the right size, you wouldn’t need to be working in food services.” The other hostess leaned over, “on what we make, maybe you should take it.” My hostess shot her a glance back that said “I can’t believe you said that.”
I looked over at the second hostess. “She’s not a very good hostess is she? You’d take a bribe wouldn’t you?”
She nodded in amusement.
Now this exchange took a moment, so I asked, “Has it been fifteen minutes since we’ve been talking? My pager hasn’t gone off yet, and I’m ready to gnaw off my own arm.”
A third hostess who’d been happily listening to all this comes over, “boy, I bet one gets hungry waiting in line — would you like me to run to the kitchen and get you a bread basket with our best bread?” I turned to my hostess, “see, that’s what my most favorite person in the world would say. You should take notes.”
The second hostess said, “I want to go get the bread.” The third one responded, “it’s my idea.” My hostess said, “he’s my customer.” And in moments there were three young women all bickering amongst themselves about who was going to go get me free food. Meanwhile, the line behind me was growing.
Eventually the one who thought up the idea won and ran off. I looked at the other two, “let’s time her.” She returned moments later. “Oh, look — she’s prompt, and in under 15 minutes,” I commented to the others.
I took the bread baskets and thanked her. “I’d give you a hug, if it wasn’t for the restraining orders.” She smiled and everyone enjoyed the distraction, including the customers standing in line apparently.
We sat out in the terrace area, enjoying our warm fresh bread basket.