As my 55th birthday was rapidly approaching, my wife decided that it was time for our family to take a little vacation along the California coast. Specifically, we booked a hotel room for a few days in Monterey.
We drove out to the coast late Saturday night, escaping record breaking, triple digit heat in Sacramento and finding a much more pleasant climate in which to hide for three days. The first night, we arrived and had just enough time to unpack a few things, eat some snacks while watching television in the room, then go to bed. Our plan was to get up early the next day and start our vacation with breakfast on the pier and a leisurely walk along the beach staring out at the ocean.
With no alarm set, we woke on Sunday morning at about 11 in the morning, then spent the next couple hours sitting around waiting for EM1 to get her hair just right so we could go outside. Breakfast on the pier had now become lunch.
Not a problem. I figured I could make the adjustment.
When EM1 finally looked in the mirror and pronounced herself fit for public view, we wandered down to the Monterey pier. We decided to eat first before doing any sightseeing or shopping, and we picked a restaurant that we had visited before and knew that we liked their food.
Sometime between January 2020, and June 2021 it appeared that the restaurant had fired their old chef who had taken the recipes for anything edible along with him when he left. They then hired someone with culinary talents that had never advanced past the skillset of cutting the crusts off a peanut butter sandwich. In short, the meal was a horrible disappointment.
I ordered clam chowder in a bread bowl. The soup was barely room temperature and tasted like the clams hadn’t been fresh since they were canned as surplus rations for Korean War soldiers. EM1 ordered fettuccini alfredo, which was at least better than the clam chowder, but only because it is difficult to judge the flavor of a food that has absolutely no flavor of any kind.
My wife ordered her favorite item on the menu: crab cakes. She ate about half the food on her plate and pronounced it, “okay.” This is about the equivalent of asking how the maiden voyage of the Titanic went, and having a surviving passenger say, “it was fine.”
We left the restaurant sorely disappointed and a hundred dollars poorer.
The family and I wandered along the Monterey coast for about thirty minutes after lunch and found a small group of outlet stores. Attached to the stores was a small café that served sandwiches and deep-fried snacks. I suggested we go in and order something.
My wife looked at me and asked, “You’re still hungry? We just ate.”
We all had a good laugh at her clever joke, then went inside and ate our first decent meal of the trip.
The rest of the day was a blur of shops and stores and buying items for the kids. I’m not sure exactly how much money we spent, but I do recall that the credit card company called me three times that day to make certain my card hadn’t been stolen.
In the evening, we again elected to visit a restaurant we knew and had previously liked. While the chef at this establishment was more accomplished than the busboy apparently doing all the cooking at our lunch destination, the ingredients he had to work with were rapidly dwindling. They must have had a busy day prior to our arrival.
I ordered the french dip sandwich, only to be told that they had run out of roast beef and I would need to select something else. I rallied from my disappointment and settled for the club sandwich instead.
“Can I get that on white toast, please?” I asked.
The waiter gave me a sad pout. “I’m really sorry. We’re also out of white bread.”
What? How the hell does a restaurant run out of white bread? If there is one staple that no restaurant should ever run out of, it’s white bread.
I opted for sourdough instead. Then I ordered a long island iced tea. I figured a large amount of alcohol would help me to eat the sandwich I didn’t want, served on the bread I didn’t want.
Turns out I was right. Booze makes lots of things way more tolerable.
When the meal was over, EM2 decided she wanted something for dessert. She ordered the crème brulee. Our waiter hissed through his teeth, doing his best David Rose impression, then said, “Gee, I’m really sorry. We don’t have any.”
We skipped dessert and I asked for the check.
When the waiter handed us the bill, I slapped my hands to my cheeks and told him, “Oh, no. Gee, I’m really sorry, but we don’t have any more money. We ran out.”
Not really.
But I wish I had.
We slogged back to our hotel room and rummaged through the junk food we had packed along with us for the trip. I had brought a bag of miniature powdered donuts. It wasn’t crème brulee, but we also didn’t run out.
In terms of food, day one had been something of a failure. We went to bed hoping that day two would be an improvement.
How did it go?
Well, we’ll get to that next week.
To be continued…
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