Another Bizarre Meal with Bob

Bob and I took a trip to the Eastern Shore over the weekend, and had a disappointing and thoroughly baffling restaurant experience. We had decided to have a stroll around town and have dinner wherever looked interesting. We settled on Scossa.

Once we walked in the door, though, I totally ceased to understand what was happening. Seriously, I felt like we'd wandered through some sort of restaurant world Looking Glass. I've never eaten anywhere so weird (and that includes the place with the Turkish toilet).

There seemed to be three hosts, none of whom could agree as to whether we could have a table. We asked to peruse a menu to see if we wanted to eat there (no menus were posted outside) and this simple request required two different people to fulfill it, along with a flurry of activity.

Before we had a chance to slip out unnoticed, we were emphatically ushered to a table. The food, which should have been a highlight, was a disappointment. Each entree was priced over 25 dollars, and the portions were skimpy. I'm a small person who usually only eats half of her entree, and I left the restaurant absolutely starving.

The food itself? My salmon tasted like it had been soaked for hours in margarine, and the endive was slimy in texture. Ugh.

Oh, and did I mention that we appeared to have two different waitresses, a waiter, AND a random woman who dashed off with Bob's coat without really checking with us first (and therefore swiping his wallet)?

Once my initial confusion had subsided, I noticed we were in Married Couple Date Night Hell. We were surrounded by ladies with pastel turtlenecks, big hair and sour expressions, and their embittered, desperately bored husbands.

And, last and most annoying of all, we were seated next to two very drunk couples who had brought along a small child. The child was being ignored in favor of pouring more wine, and proceeded to get cranky and howl intermittently throughout the meal. No effort was made to take him outside until he could calm down. I don't really mind kids in restaurants, I think it's good to expose children to different environments and cuisines. But proceeding to get tanked while your child howls in misery is beyond ridiculous. Especially since it was well after that kid's bedtime.

Restaurant experiences shouldn't be so hectic and confusing. And if they're going to charge $25 for mediocre food, can I at least have something that fills me up? Eesh. We went to a pub afterwards and split an order of inexpensive peel and eat shrimp. And it was about a hundred times better than the offerings of Scossa. Seriously, stay away.