Valentine's Day ups & downs

We usually don't make a big deal out of Valentine's Day and this year we really didn't either. However, we did decide to make reservations and go out for a nice dinner. I'm not sure if we'll be doing that again next year... We both like sushi (only the cooked kind because we don't need any more heart viruses). It's one thing I crave a lot. It's generally pretty healthy for you so it's not necessarily a bad thing. Blue Sushi sent me an e-mail a little over a week before Valentine's Day saying they were taking reservations. So, I figured "What the heck? I like sushi, let's go out for a nice dinner. It is a Saturday after all." We normally have a good experience at Blue and we've always gotten good service at all their locations. You would think that Valentine's Day would follow suit. This apparently wasn't the case.

Both John and I were surprised at how many empty tables there were. We were expecting it to be completely packed all night. Since it was Valentine's Day we decided to splurge a little and get a couple extra things besides the sushi. Usually we just get some sushi rolls to share and that's about it. John picked out some soup and I picked out a salad. We also ordered some tempura. Then, we waited, and waited, for about 15 minutes before anything came out of the kitchen. We watched as the expediters kept trying to deliver everyone's food from our side of the restaurant to the table adjacent to us. After first trying to deliver a salad to the other table, they brought it to ours and asked if we had ordered a salad. I said yes because I assumed it was mine. But upon closer inspection, it was definitely not the salad I ordered and I told the waitress this. She then went back to the kitchen and came back out with a menu to confirm what we ordered. We waited for another five to ten minutes and our tempura and our sushi showed up together. At this point, we really didn't want the soup and salad and we were somewhat irritated. We told the waitress who canceled our order. As we were working on the sushi, I had finished my drink and ordered a second one. We waited on that drink for more than twenty minutes as well until the manager stopped by to ask how things were. We explained the situation and he tried to "explain" to us that sometimes it's complicated to coordinate getting food out at the right time. I think John and I both shot him a dirty look because he immediately started back-pedaling saying "...but the food should have been out on time." He offered us free dessert but we didn't really want it. I did end up getting my second drink for free though.

After the somewhat frustrating encounter with the manager, I thought it would be nice to have a little fun. We never eat the wasabi, so I decided to get creative with it.

So, Blue is sort of on time-out for awhile. It hasn't officially been placed in exile, but I think we would have both been more satisfied if the manager hadn't tried to convince us that getting food out of the kitchen on time and to the right table is hard. As John put it later when we got back to his place, "I work with things I can't see all day and I somehow manage to keep things together. In the time we waited for any food to come, I could have walked back to the kitchen, found a bowl, ladled some soup and made a damn salad myself." I'm sure we'll go back again, because it was definitely not the typical experience we've had there.

After we got back to John's place, I started flipping through the channels. We had planned to watch Lost because we're behind, but I found the Princess Bride and we couldn't stop watching. Every time I see that movie I hear Abby's voice in my head from when she first saw the beginning of the movie "Why is Colombo reading to the Wonder Years kid?" It makes me laugh every time they cut to the scenes they're in.

Overall, a good night despite the bad service but I don't know that we'll be trying to make reservations on Valentine's Day again.