Riley LaShea & the Story of the Barbecue Chicken

Preface

So, I intended this post to be supplementary to my cherry blossom post, because it happened in DC and it was logical.

Some stuff happened with the world, though, and I find it in poor taste to complain about something completely insignificant when there’s some immediate, important shiz going on. Of course, there’s always something major happening somewhere in the world, and, you know, Chicago gun violence and hatin’ and all that are pretty much nonstop, but I have to tell my chicken story some time.

That time is now.

Chapter 1

Having worked in a restaurant, albeit briefly and not in the back, and having known people who have worked in restaurants in a cooking capacity, I am hesitant to send things back to a restaurant kitchen. Those plates pass through a lot of hands on the way from stove to table, and the nasty things that can be done to an entree are limitless.

My imagination doesn’t generally go so far as the scene in Waiting, but I’m not real interested in consuming anyone’s spit either.

Chapter 2

While in DC, we went to a barbecue restaurant at which we dined the last time we were in town. Apparently, we were exhausted enough from having just flown back into the country, and having been up roughly 24 hours, on our last go-round that the food seemed good when it wasn’t, because the food, well, it wasn’t good.

This isn’t a review, though.

Chapter 3

At our last dining, we tried only pork, so this time around I suggested a three-meat plate in order to give the barbecue a full try, and sharing it, because restaurant entrees are ridiculous anyway, and entrees that come with three different meats should not be eaten by one person.

So, upon placement of said order, it is discovered we have a “Look how cool I am that I can take your order without a notepad” waiter, which is only acceptable when the orders come out right, which inevitably they don’t, and is never as cool as they think. This of course meant, despite only a single meal, we got an incorrect meat.

Chicken.

Nobody wanted chicken.

Chapter 4

There sat the chicken, not under-cooked, not overcooked, a totally wrong food item. I didn’t want the replacement meat to be spit-meat, but if I wanted chicken, I would have ordered chicken, and maybe the waiter could have spared us all if he invested in a notepad.

So, I told the waiter that nobody wanted that chicken, and he was all “Aww shucks. Yeah, it wasn’t supposed to be chicken. I’ll take care of it.”

Chapter 5

Minutes went by, and, at last, the waiter returned. With a small plate. The manager, we’re told, needed his chicken back.

In disbelief, I forked the untouched chicken onto the manager’s little plate, and swore I could hear him whispering “Gotcha” on the wind. Obviously, the confrontation-phobic manager thought we were trying to quadruple our triple for free, just because we were sharing, and sent the “Aw shucks” waiter, whose admission that he’d made a mistake didn’t make it as far as the kitchen, to catch us in the act.

Then, the restaurant died.

The End