Random Unrelated Image: Dimples!

In Italian restaurants, there are usually three areas: smoking, non-smoking, and the darkly lit area where they put people on dates when they suspect they’ll be eating Spaghetti out of each others mouths Lady & the Tramp style after a few glasses of wine. That is where the wife and I like to sit.

When I eat with her, I usually screw things up. I either eat with my mouth open, or talk with my mouth full. Going out to a fancy place to eat is especially stressful. There’s something about sitting down in a really fancy place where the entrees alone cost almost as much as your entire monthly food budget and you realize there are a million things you can do wrong.

There are all those little formalities you have to perform often without a cue from the waiter. Like there are twelve forks sitting in front of me and each one of them is for a different course of the meal. I’m supposed to know the use of each one of them based on their size and length. This small one over here, it’s the coffee fork. Wait a minute, why do I need a fork for my coffee?

Then there are all the things you’re not supposed to do. Don’t try to reuse anything. It will be replaced by a new one in a moment. Listen politely when the waiter reads the wine selections and pretend to be interested even if you don’t want any. And yes, you want pepper on your salad because the waiter showed up at the table with this really elaborate ivory grinder and you don’t want to disappoint him, do you?

And what will I order? I’ll have the ‘Herb Roasted Atlantic Monkfish Tail’ just because it sounds cool. And the waiter is going to say ‘Excellent choice, sir’ when I order it.

I’m not sure why it is that when you order at a fancy restaurant, the waiter always pretends to find your choice of entrees ‘excellent.’ I think it’s supposed to make you feel like a culinary professional.

I don’t order pizza that often, and nowadays, every pizza joint seems to have these online ordering deals to simplify the process. I use my debit card, and everything works great. I hate having cash on me, so this works out well.

Tonight, a guy delivered my pizza, even picked my paper up out of the driveway when he came in, and for the first time, I wondered if I should be tipping.

Now, when I go to a restaurant and sit down, I start my server out with with their 15% percent, if the service is great, average, or shitty, I adjust that 15% accordingly.

Tonight, the pizza guy had a somewhat blank like stare on his face when I grabbed my pizza and just said thanks. Should I be tipping pizza delivery dudes?

Why?

I noticed on my receipt that they charge a delivery fee, so I figured I was cool. When I got my physical receipt though, it said, “Driver gratuity not included.” It seems they expect people to tip drivers.

I don’t know, just curious to what everyone else thinks.

Two women were hospitalized after a New Zealand cafe mistakenly served dishwashing liquid as mulled wine, a newspaper reported Tuesday.

Chico’s Restaurant Ltd. in the mountain resort of Queenstown on South Island pleaded guilty to a charge of selling food containing extraneous matter – the chemical sodium hydroxide – that caused injury, the Southland Times newspaper said.

Prosecutor Sarah McKenzie told Queenstown District Court that the two women were taken to a hospital after drinking the liquid last July, the newspaper reported.

Customer Sarah Ferguson had ordered a glass of “Mountain Thunder” mulled wine from Queenstown’s Old Man Rock Cafe, owned by Chico’s Restaurant Ltd.

She spat out the liquid when she experienced a burning sensation on her lips and mouth.

Cafe worker Bethany Sim offered to test the drink and suffered a similar reaction.