Current mood:	tired
Entry tags:	meetup

Macaroni Grill
So, last night was another great meetup for the Dining Out group. In fact, it was our biggest meetup yet. We had 15 people show up. Far fewer than the 24 that had RSVP'd Yes plus 3 that said Maybe, but that is typical and it was a good turn out. About half the people were people from previous meetups and half were new. Let's see how many people I can remember the names of...there was of course Tanja and me, Dana, Caroline (sick yet again, but she still came), Kenise (had to apologize her for missing the cooking demonstration at the Italian fest - she was the organizer for that meetup), Gina (she was at the first meetup I went to, but this was her first time back), Ganelle (she's been to one or two of the other meetups, but haven't really talked to her much), Lance (quiet as usual), William (he's been to at least one meetup before), oh and Larry was there (he was looking pretty rough - his car got stolen earlier this week)...that rounds out the old people. Hmm..I guess that was more than half the group after all. Oh well, we still had 5 new people. Heather and her fiancee were there for the first time (sorry, I'm still tired and can't remember his name), they were a lot of fun and i look forward to seeing them at future meetups. Jay was another new guy, didn't actually talk to him at all except to get his name. Then there were the two other new people. It's really bad that I can't remember their names because I was talking to them quite a bit to try to get them chatting with the group. The one woman (Brandy? and maybe her friend was Liz?) was the member and had brought her friend with her because she was too nervous to come by herself. Her friend seemed even more nervous, at least she was just very quiet at first.

Us regulars were all catching up with each other when I noticed the two of them were really just talking to each other quietly and not even doing much of that. So, I tried to bring them while the others chatted away. I got them both to talk a bit more (they even got me to talk more when they brought up the angry posting about me by one woman after we cancelled the meetup for the sunset symphony - have I talked about that at all? I'll have to check), but I think it was Tanja's winning personality that finally got them to feel comfortable with the group. She's just really good at that. They even got comfortable enough that they invited people to go do karioke with them after the dinner. I don't believe anybody took them up on the offer, but it was still cool that they did it.

So, how was the actual dining experience? Well, it was Macorroni Grill. They do have fairly good food, but it is nothing compared to the other places we have been eating out at. Service was, well, it was satisfactory. Nothing to complain about, but also nothing to really compliment. No orders were messed up that I noticed. Drinks took a little bit longer to come than I would normally expect, but that could have been the bar. The waitress did a good job of keeping up everybody's water and the non-alcoholic drinks. She also did a good job at keeping fresh bread at the table, though we did have to ask for the fresh ground herbs to have in the olive oil for dipping. The real deficiencies I saw in the place were the things they were lacking. For one, they were completely out of eggplant, out of veal, and out of something else that I can't remember. Oh and another thing was that she never offered to grate parmessian cheese on anybody's meal like they normally do. I had to call out to her to get her to bring it over for Tanja's meal (she does love the cheese). And then she just handed it to us to do ourselves. Because of the table setup, I understand it was a bit hard to reach everybody, but come on. Besides, that's why they typically ask people if they want cheese on their meal before handing it over to you.

I ended up having the chicken parmesian because they didn't have the eggplant for the eggplant parmesian I actually wanted. It was ok, but it seemed quite bland compared to the chicken dish Tanja and I had made the night before. The calamari appetizer was good though, and so was Tanja's Vodka Rustica.

We actually ended up staying there pretty late. I have no clue what time they close, long before we left it seemed like we were the only people left in the restaurant (though as we were leaving one couple was just being seated I noticed). What was really bad though is that as usual when we are leaving, a bunch of us are lingering around, standing by the tables chatting. Normally that is no big deal, but they started cleaning up all around us as if to try to get us to get the heck out of there. It was rather annoying.

After most everybody had left Larry invited Tanja and I to go get drinks with him and a few others. It actually made me a bit sad to say no, because he just really looked like he could use a drink after the week he's had with his car being stolen. But Tanja and I have been doing a lot of late nights this week and were trying to be good about not staying up to all hours. We will definitely have to do something with him later on. I hope Dana and anybody else that went with him for drinks were able to cheer him up.

Happy Things: I just heard from my friend from high school and she thinks that she and her husband will be able to come down for the party I am having this Saturday! That's pretty exciting since I haven't seen her in over 10 years. And I've been wanting to meet her husband.