Let’s not eat out

I do not like to go out to eat. I fail to see the appeal of selecting and ordering a meal only to be told the kitchen can’t fix what I want. Still, my husband wanted a restaurant breakfast, so we went. The waitress came to our table, looked at my husband and said, “I bet you want biscuits and gravy.”
He looked at her astonished, “Yes, I do.”
“We are out of biscuits.”
He mused barely a second, “Do you have toast?”
“I can make some. So you want the gravy on toast?” He nodded. She left to place the order and returned to announce, “We do have biscuits.”
Must be fresh out of the oven, I thought, so I ordered a couple without gravy.
She brought my husband a bowl with biscuits and gravy.
A bowl?
Well yes, you need a bowl when the gravy is as thin as soup with two microscopic pieces of sausage floating in the gravy-soup.
He looked at me in disbelief, “Have you ever seen gravy this thin?”
“No.”
He did not complain. His mamma had taught him to eat what was put before him. He ate and analyzed it, “The cook did not heat it long enough to thicken the soup into gravy.”
She brought plain biscuits. “Do you have butter?” I asked.
“Yes. Do you want some jam?”
“Sure.” I know we don’t eat out often, but I sort of thought those items came without question.
I also thought that the biscuits would hot.
They weren’t. They couldn’t even melt the butter.
I noticed a special on milk shakes and ordered a strawberry shake.
Several minutes passed before she returned, “I haven’t forgotten your milk shake. I have it started.”
“Okay, thanks.”.
Five minutes later she returned to report, “We are out of milk. I can bring you the strawberries and ice cream I scooped up. Otherwise they will be thrown out.”
Free food. Sure, why not.
She returned with a bowl heaped with vanilla ice cream covered with a thick layer of strawberry laden sauce. Some people call that a sundae. That day it was a milk free, unmixed strawberry shake.
I began nibbling on the sundae that had no crunchy nuts.
My husband finished his breakfast platter and ate some shake/sundae.
We waited for the bill.
It never came. Finally, he went to the cashier to pay.
The bill did not include a charge for the shake/sundae. The free food reminded me of the time we went into a high end restaurant carrying a gift card funded to cover several meals. We studied the menu, ordered and sat back to wait.
We waited and waited.
The floor supervisor brought us appetizers, “These are on the house.”
She returned 10 minutes later with more free food.
The waitress re-appeared and asked, “Did you really want to order this food?”
I thought of that line from the 101 Dalmatians, “Do you have cloth ears?”
Out loud I politely said, “Yes.”
Eventually our food arrived, followed by the supervisor who said, “The meal is on us.”
We had no complaints about the free food. It really did taste delicious. The poor service we received every time we tried to use our gift card, though, deterred us from returning once we finally depleted the gift card.
After being jinxed with similar experiences through the years, I prefer to stay home and do my own short order meal prep. That way I know who to blame if the gravy is watery … and how to fix it.