Hell Hath No Fury (aka, my terrible review of Explorer’s Club)

My friend Anna and I went out to dinner the other night. We went to a casual neighborhood place called The Explorer’s Club, known for its eclectic, global menu. Stupidly, we assumed that a global menu also meant a global sensibility, in that they didn’t expect to turn over tables like Bob Evans or Denny’s. Apparently, we were wrong.

We ordered five small plates and a bottle of wine, like a place with small plates and bottles of wine invites. While we were finishing our last small plate and had an inch of wine left in our bottle, a strange, ugly, bearded man came up to our table, and quite aggressively, told us to “order an entrée or move along.”

“Uh, we have ordered five small plates,” I informed him.

He did not care. “I have tables waiting at the bar, and you are sitting at a four top.”

Note: we had not asked for a four top, nor had we made any indication that we were a party of four. We were clearly a party of two, and there were numerous EMPTY tables in the restaurant, which had been empty for quite some time. Furthermore, and probably most importantly, we had not been offered our check. Had we been there for hours on end, a la, My Dinner with Andre? Certainly not. We’d been there for two hours, completely unaware that this behavior was outrageous.

Because we had not been offered our check, we sat there, clueless about what the hell we were supposed to do. Finally, we flagged down our server, and told her that we’d been kicked out of the restaurant, and were in need of our check.

“That guy was an asshole,” my friend and I told our server. Except that we used the more appropriate term a-hole.  We didn't want to offend the poor girl.  “Is he the manager?”

“No, he’s the owner,” our server told us, clearly embarrassed. The owner!

Anna and I would have been on our way within twenty minutes had this not happened. And, in fact, we would have been on our way with lovely memories of delicious fried plantains and empanadas. We would have recommended this shithole to all of our friends. But because this jackass could not control his own aggression, we, instead, were spoken to in a condescending way, and, spoken to as if we were lollygaggers that were intentionally insisting on staying, despite their polite entreaties to leave. In actuality, this was the furthest from the truth. To repeat, there were a number of empty tables in the restaurant, suggesting that we could linger. Second, we had been there for about two hours, not four hours. A restaurant with small plates and bottles of wine contains an implicit suggestion that guests chose and explore (huh! Explorer’s Club! Who knew!) several options. We had not been offered our check, nor had our server come by to ask if we would like anything else before this asshole came over to our table and told us to leave. To be clear, we had NO CLUE that the ENTIRE FATE OF THIS NOTHING RESTAURANT WAS RESTING ON WHETHER OR NOT WE STAYED FOR ANOTHER TWENTY MINUTES OR LEFT!

So…..Tracy Studer….PLEASE let me apologize in the clearest terms possible. I had no idea that you were following the Denny’s service model of rapid table turnover. I had no idea that, as customers, we were expected to read your mind, or worry about things that were not readily apparent. We had no idea that getting the check was OUR RESPONSIBILITY. I AM SO SORRY, Tracy Studer. I, furthermore, apologize profusely for the fact that you have never learned social skills or how to run a business. How horrible that must be for you. Most importantly, I am so sorry for the people who work for you. It must be fucking torture for them to put up with you, your hysteria, and your insistence on turning away good customers. PS, I did not take your shit out on my server. She was lovely, and entirely deserving of the 38% tip I left on my tab.

Last, and most importantly, I would like to let you know a few things: a satisfied customer tells an average of seven people of his or her good experience. An unsatisfied customer tells an average of sixteen people. Except that Anna and I are not average customers. I write a blog that has an average of 2000 views a month. Anna and I are both articulate lawyers, with a large network of friends, and no hesitation to post reviews on Yelp, Urbanspoon, and Facebook. We have friends who are vindictive motherfuckers, and who will not visit your restaurant out of spite. We live in a city with PLENTY of good eateries, and WE DON’T NEED YOU.

So Tracy Studer, and Explorer’s Club, kindly fuck off. Oh, PS, their contact information is http://www.explorersclubmv.com/contact/. Please feel free to copy and paste this blog entry directly to them. Rock on, rockers.

Broad and High

Almost every day, for the past four years, I have passed through the same intersection of Broad and High streets, in the center of Downtown, Columbus. I drive east at rush hour on my way to class, and I drive west in the double digits of night on my way home. I run through the intersection in the early hours of the weekend mornings, when the hookers are still asleep and the addicts are too blinky and disoriented to be too scary. I have to tell you, if I could choose to sit anyplace for hours at a time, this would be the place.

My favorite thing about Broad and High is that it is the perfect vinaigrette of batshit crazy people, and totally normal people who are just trying to catch the bus. The fascinating part is trying to guess who is who. I do not say this lightly. I saw a seven foot tall man with a cane and a top hat, and I was like, “Got it: that’s a crazy one.” Wrong. He was shooting a commercial. On the other hand, I saw a perfectly dressed woman walking down the street at a business-like clip. “Ah, the working woman!” I thought! Until she pulled a cat out of her hair and handed it to a guy dressed like Elmo. You just never know on Broad and High. One day, I saw a nun protesting. On closer look, it wasn’t a nun. It was a dude. The outfit was from a costume shop. Nuns totally don’t wear Sound of Music wimples anymore.

But even if the guessing game of What Am I Going to See Today didn’t keep me intrigued, the opportunity for back story creation would. Here is a fact: I am a compulsive back story creator. I create a back story for literally everyone. Dean of my law school? Lived with the natives in Paraguay. Weird neighbor? Competitive Boggle player. Hateful coworker? Spends her Friday nights painting her nails and crying. See? I can make a back story for anyone.

The people on Broad and High provide rich imagery for a fascinating back story: they have scars, chef pants, bicycles, backpacks of every stripe, wigs, furry thigh-high boots, and accessories that range from Gucci sunglasses to a ship in a bottle. These aren’t just skeezy prostitutes and twitchy drug addicts; they are skeezy prostitutes with dreams, and twitchy drug addicts who are just looking for companionship and free doughnuts from Tim Hortons. Somehow, everyone mixes together: working folks, street people, valet parkers, city workers, police officers, politicians on their way to lunch, and confused schoolchildren whose bus dropped them off to soak up some Ohio history at the statehouse.

And I guess this is the bottom line: I love Broad and High because I identify with everyone who ends up there. I’m a harried office worker, a citizen, a consumer, a commuter, a student, a mother, an artist, a sightseer, and a pedestrian. In the most private recesses of my mind, I am as crazy, as addicted, as lost, as lonely, and as desperately in need of community as any person who finds himself on the corner that separates east, west, north and south in my city. And I know that I’ll never be able to see, appreciate, or understand every person who ends up on Broad and High, but I can see every bit of myself there.