Salt Lake City Here We Come

Two days on the road already driving through whiteout conditions on I-80 from my rural home in Encampment to Salt Lake City for a creative meeting on the project. Arrived in town and had a call from Bob, so went to the airport and picked him up. I had a recommendation to have dinner at the Red Iguana and drove right past the place on the way to the airport. There was a line out the door. Stopped, picked up a menu, and asked about reservations for dinner tomorrow. Got Bob, drove back through the city to the hotel. When I stomped on the brakes because the light turned yellow, he said they don’t drive like that in Boston. And I told him the nearest stoplight to my home is more than 70 miles away. I’m not used to them. I continued through downtown Salt Lake City, and before we got to the hotel, six blocks—and six more stoplights away—he offered to do the driving. I handed him the keys when we headed to dinner.

--Candy


It’s Friday night and we’re in a Salt Lake Bistro. It’s not all that late but we’re the only ones in here. We order and I ordered chicken. Candy ordered salmon, Paul had pork chops, Bob had some kind of tuna and gave very specific detail on how he wanted it cooked, not cold but not hot, and Edna had a steak. When the tall, perky waitress brought out the food she placed it before us and Bob said, “Nice presentation.” I looked at the plate of chicken in front of me and my reaction was what the hell is this spaghetti sticking up out of the top of my mashed potatoes. Am I supposed to light this on fire? It’s not my birthday.

Then the waitress placed Candy’s salmon in front of her. It also had a spaghetti sticking out of her mashed potatoes. I looked at her plate and said, “Is that salmon?” because it looked exactly looked like the chicken on my plate. Candy said, “No, this is not salmon.”

When the waitress noticed the looks on both of our faces, she said “Is there a problem?” Candy said, “I had ordered salmon and this is chicken,” and the waitress said, “Oh, I thought you said saaame one.” And I thought Candy doesn’t have an accent. It’s Salmon not saaam on.” And Candy said, “It’s okay, I like chicken.” And the waitress responded, “We were out of salmon.”

Later, after hearing some of the conversation at our table a gentleman came over and began removing the painting from the wall that was nearest to our table. He even took a piece from farther away telling us how expensive they were. Meantime Edna suddenly piped up with, “Please tell me there’s a set of stairs behind the booth where you are sitting because that man just disappeared into the floor.” Later, back at the hotel pub, we told the bartender who had recommended the restaurant and even made a personal call to tell them we coming over and asked them to give us special service, that we thought the meal was excellent, but that Candy had ordered salmon and gotten chicken because they were out of salmon. And he told us that he had just restocked the cooler with salmon that morning and knew they could not have served that much salmon during the day.
--Quackgrass