The Macaroni Elbow

The Spoonstress and I went to Macaroni Grill recently. I'm only now able to stomach a brief recap.

I wanted to see 'how the other half eats.' And like Jacob Riis' poignant, 1890 book on New York slum life--How the Other Half Lives--it wasn't pretty.

Everything's huge. The restaurant's big, the people eating (and working there) are bigger and the portions are biggest. Even the amount of time we waited was large--35 minutes. Ironically, the only thing not oversized are the free mints.

Our waiter was among the worst I've ever had. He was alternately unfriendly and unavailable the entire night. Then, miraculously, he morphed into a quasi-waiter at tip time. He launched into a (not very well) rehearsed routine about how we'd better come back or else we were dead meat, as he jokingly hit his open hand with his fist.

I felt like I was watching some sort of training video example of how not to wait tables. Sadly, it was just a night at the Macaroni Grill. Oh by the way, the food's terrible.