June 4 09
Eating Out: Rodents in a Restaurant
Recently a friend and I decided to go somewhere quiet for a drink and some good conversation. The place we'd originally intended on was closed, so after a quick discussion, plan B became the upstairs at Ferris Oyster Bar. I'd heard good things about it from friends. We figured since the downstairs of Ferris was generally great, the upstairs, considered to be superior, would exceed our expectations.
We stood next to the Please Wait to be Seated sign for about 10 minutes, watching restaurant staff wander past us between the bar and tables. Finally a middle-aged man approached us with a perturbed expression on his face. "Have you been helped?" He asked. He was tall, lean and peevish looking. He wore a pink and black checkered sweater-vest that oozed sexual confusion. (Nothing against sweater-vests, but this one WAS particularly bad.)
"No!" I said smiling. "Actually we HAVEN'T been helped." He looked around the restaurant uneasily, eying a few empty tables and said, "It will just take a moment to get your table ready." He pointed to a recently vacated spot. Aparently he wanted to clean one for us, instead of seating us at a pre-arranged table.
And so we waited some more. He flitted off to the kitchen, and came back to agitatedly tell us again that our table was still being made ready. I looked at the table he'd pointed to. Nothing had happened to it, so "duh". I looked around at the other empty tables, made eye contact with my friend and shrugged. Finally the guy got around to wiping it clean, and then we sat down.
My friend and I started chatting, and suddenly I interrupted her and said "What time it is? Has a waitress come by yet?" A good 15-20 minutes had passed, and we hadn't seen a single sign of a server. I looked around, and amazingly a waitress saw me. She came over. We ordered drinks. My friend ordered a dessert.
"Oh that is such a good choice, I'll bring two spoons." The server smiled.
"That's okay, I don't feel like dessert." I said.
"When you see this you will. I'm bringing two spoons."
"Thanks for offering me a piece of someone else's cake!" She trotted off. "Looks like you have to share, and you weren't given a choice." We chuckled. But seriously. What if this had been a business meeting? Not appropriate.
We prattled the hours away, and finally the lights were turned on, and the music turned off. We were the last people there, except for a couple curled up on a couch in the corner.
"Oh my GOD." My friend said, pointing. I turned around and followed her finger. Something scurried across the floor and under a table. We looked at each other in shock. The place had mice! Crazy.
Within a minute the mouse was out in the open again, scrambling around tables for a morsel of food. He came within 5 feet of us, and as I pointed, he lurched backwards, and ducked for cover under a chair. He watched us, while chewing on something he'd found.
The restaurant staff were busy amusing themselves with clenaup, and had seemingly forgotten we were still there. "Excuse me," I said. "You have a mouse!" No one responded. They were chatting with each other. "Excuse me!"
Someone drying dishes behind the bar looked up. "Pardon?" He said.
"You have a mouse!" I said. "There's a mouse running around." To my amazement, he laughed.
"We know." He said.
"Is he doing a little jig?" Our waitress asked, without looking up from the cash she was counting.
I am not at all afraid of mice. If anything, I find them pretty cute. But I do know that having a mouse in a food-serving establishment is NOT okay. Especially since some people are really afraid of them. I wonder what the health inspector would say, especially since the entire staff seem to know of its existence. Ferris' advertises their upstairs lounge as being a step above the one beneath it, and their prices certainly reflect that. I'm wondering exactly what that means, since the upstairs seems to have a little problem. ("Little", get it?)
We got up and left. No one said good bye to us.
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