Often, when restaurants are empty, diners get special treatment from the waitstaff, whether out of boredom, desperation for tips, or some other reason. When Big-L and my hungover asses pulled Billy’s Dad out of his post-work funk and into No Fish Go Fish, we got a waitress to ourselves. Nay, we got the restaurant to ourselves.
Billy’s Dad had had a rough day at work. Big-L and I were really hungover, and it was that odd dining hour between 5 and 6. we were hungry, punchy, and honestly, i was a few degrees south of lucidity. The waitress sauntered over while big-L and I groaned about out livers, having dispatched with a scraggily looking hippy. As she warily watched the hippie outside the restaurant, she says ‘I hope they don’t come in here.’
she looks at us. ‘Are any of you in food service?’
‘I am’ I say. (yeah, yeah, I know. I was. present tense shortens the story)
‘Okay, we’re gonna be friends. do you ever, y’know, try to prevent people from eating in your restaurant?’ asks the waitress
‘Well I tend to piss of customers, so I hide behind the pass. Then you can pile your venom on the waitress, not the customer.’ This is quite true–my daliances into actually serving food have always been met with comments like ‘he makes great food, but why is he such a dick?’ Anyway, back to the story.
‘Yeah..’ says waitress, ‘…but it’s a lot of fun to tell customers they’ve pissed off the chef.’
‘True dat.’ says I. ‘I have a friend who cooks at The Delta. Once a woman ordered ‘a steak as rare as you can make it.’ Now, the Delta doesn’t have steak on the menu, so this was extra special order kinda thing. The line grinds to a halt and my friend makes her a steak as rare as he can make it–like illegaly rare. He sends it out, and the bitch has the cojones to say it’s too rare. My buddy goes nuts and embeds his knife in the wall about two feet to the right of the waitress who walked back in with the offending steak.’ [true story]
‘well that would be an extreme case’ says the waitress. She eyes the hippies outside again.
‘Yeah, that woman just walked off with a menu. Didn’t ask or anything. She said they couldn’t really eat garlic. I told her everything has garlic–tons of garlic. God I hope they don’t come in here.’
‘You should have told them the special was garlic with garlic sauce.’ adds Billy’s Dad.
‘Tell them it’s garlic salt in the shakers.’ says Big-L
‘So,’ says our new friend. ‘Drinks?’
Two Bloody Marys, two different vodkas (new deal, ketel one). Bitchy order, taken in stride. I even got a lil mini cutesy bloody mary in a shot glass. While I love me some tomato juice, I passed on a thrid bloody mary at the table. NoGo has variety in all liquors, including Old Overholt; it’s really rare to see 100% rye on a shelf their cocktail menu is large, esoteric and (dare I say) fun I’m usually offended by ‘-tini’ drinks, but theirs are playful, funny and probably tasty.
‘you want a Sinatra. Ginger Lemonade and Bourbon.’ says the waitress. I’m cool with that, but talk about the hair of the dog that bit you. It’s a good drink, but the lemonade seemed weak. gingery, but weak nonetheless.
‘Lets get some potstickers’ said Billy’s Dad, clearly scant moments from eating his own hand.
NoGo, as I’ll call it for brevity, serves mandu, a korean potsticker full of cabbage kimchee. eight to a plate in a starfish pattern, circumnavigated by what tastes like a thickened, sweetened hoisin sauce. Fetching, and yummy.
One thing about hangovers normally experienced during breakfast–you can stare at the menu for a long time before those letters start registering in that grey spongey mush between your ears. The waitress made a couple of passes– ‘so what are we gonna feed you?’–before she extracted our desires.
Idle chatter followed the delivery of our soups and little fish sandwiches. NoGo calls their soup ‘soup of the gods’ and unless you can prove to me that gods don’t like hot sauce, I’ll leave their soup about 2/3 up Mt. Olympus. The ‘fish sandwhiches’ are actually little pastries with assorted fillings that cook in a very cool-looking korean oven that molds them into fish, lil eyes and slightly charred scales and all. very cute.
‘You know’ says the waitress, to Big-L ‘You look really familiar.’
‘I work really close to here–we come here all the time for lunch.’ counters Big-L.
‘that must be it’ says the waitress, refilling our carafe of water. ‘drink up! you guys need it. If I remember, you’re always in here with a crew of boisterous women, right?’
‘Right!’ says big-L ‘I work for Planned Parenthood.’
‘how cool! says waitress, as she collects our soup bowls and heads for the kitchen, towards a chef who looks suspiciously like the hockey commentator for ESPN. I finished my big portion of split pea soup, with healthy and repeated applications of hot sauce. Big-L liked her cream of celery, but took most of it home. Billy’s Dad had a salad, which didn’t look thrilling. He didn’t look thrilled.
Waitress sauntered back over with our entrees–pheasant risotto for Big-L, buffalo osso bucco for Billy’s dad, grilled polenta for el gastronero. The portions at NoGo aren’t huge, but they are certainaly good sizes; NoGo does score tons of points on their presentations. Presentation can sometimes mean the difference between good and great, because, honestly, it’s a lot of fun to eat beautiful food. My dish was pyramidic, and lovely.
‘Can I ask you a question?’ says waitress, looking at Big-L. her eyes flit towards Billy’s Dad and I. ‘It’s a woman thing, so you guys might want to cover your ears.’ she continues, with a smile.
‘Oh it’s ok, they’re used to this stuff by now.’ says Big-L
Okay, that is certainly true. Being down with the OPP (Yeah, you know me) means being party to lots of conversations about womens health, stds, sexual politics and gender issues, inter alia.
As I tuck into my artfully crafted plate of polenta triangles (which seem fried, not grilled) I hear…’well I have a cyst on my ovary the size of my fist.’ says waitress.
‘Does it have hair and teeth yet?’ says Big-L.
Yes. At a table, in a restaurant, on a sunday, with the sun going down and not enough libations for drunkenness, my hungover ass ate a meal with the mental image of an ovarian cyst with teeth and hair. Wow. just Wow.
My dish was pleasant, if slightly too salty; Billy’s dad noted that while his dish was excellent, there was nothing really notably buffalo about it–an unfortunate facet of stewed meat. Big-L enjoyed her risotto, which looked on the dry side, and took most of it home.
Waitress and the table carried on throughout the meal. She kept feeding the carafe of water, noting ‘you all need to drink this.’ She offered a bone for Billy. Nice waitress, nice meal, great restaurant. I’ll be back. But really, hair and teeth?
