When the Red, Red Robin comes. . .Ahh, No, Help Me!

We decided to go out for dinner last night because the refrigerator was empty, and it was too darn hot to cook, anyway. Our first stop took us to UNO in Fayetteville, which seemed crowded with senior citizens, and offered a wait of at least 1/2 hour. (Let me be clear that we have nothing against senior citizens. After all, how could we?) So we went up the hill to Hullar's and went inside. The patrons who were there looked like melting figures on a dark birthday cake, as the AC seemed to be barely working. Thus, we decided to go back down the hill to a place of whose door we had vowed to never again darken. Oh, life, why do we choose not to learn from you? (For those of you into literary terms, I believe that is an example of "apostrophe.")

We entered RED ROBIN. We were first accosted by the noise of the place, but it was cool and we only had to wait 5 minutes before being seated in a tiny booth adjacent to the food prep area. One very nice occurrence then occurred, as occurrences are like to do. We saw John Kieffer and his lovely family, whom we hadn't seen since Catherine Simoneaux had her high school grad party. I wish that occurrence had been the start of good things, but no. . . having gone to fetch our vodka and tonic and glass of chardonnay, the waitress returned to tell us the bar was out of both tonic and chardonnay. How could a bar be out of tonic on the hottest day of the year? Ah well, we scanned the menu hoping that something we wanted would have been added since the last time, probably 2 years before, that we had eaten at RR. Nothing had been. I opted for the chicken sandwich with the "unlimited french fry" option, a sure reason that RR again won't be named to the healthiest restaurant list this year. Linda went for the petite cob salad and soup combo. As we waited I drank a cranberry and vodka as Linda sipped a glass of I forget what it was. In that time, we were regaled 3 times with the monstrous Red Robin birthday song. When our food arrived, Linda discovered that the cup of soup she had ordered was indeed a large bowl of soup, which hitting on both cylinders, to mix a metaphor, was both cold and flavorless. The petite cob salad, while not petite, did come unmixed. My chicken was chicken. We ate a bit and left.

Now I know we were at fault for this gastronomic error. RED ROBIN is for kids and parents, who are too exhausted to care what they are eating. But I am writing this to serve as a reminder in text to never again eat there. (How can a bar be out of tonic?)