A Dinner To Remember

My sister and I have had many incidents through the years where we have laughed so hard we could hardly talk. There is one incident in particular that "lives in infamy" in my mind.  We went to a family reunion together and it was a road trip of about eight hundred miles.  It was the first family reunion that her and I had attended together at that particular point in time.

Our genetic father died in a plane wreck when I was three months short of being three years old and my sister was three months short of being born. Our mother remarried when I was four and my sister was one, our father had several brothers and sisters that came and visited our family when Annette and were very young but my mother and stepfather became fairly anti-social as the years went by and eventually all of our relatives on our real father’s side stopped coming to visit.

We had one aunt who always kept in contact by writing letters to my sister and I and as we got older and could drive we were always invited to the family reunion affairs that they held every memorial day at one of the aunt, uncles or cousins houses. We weren’t particularly interested in attending them as most of them lived in fairly unpopulated areas in the state we lived in and we were pretty much raised as “city kids” and weren’t particularly interested in what we considered the “back woods” life. One year I received a letter from my Aunt Rosalie telling of the recent reunion she had attended and that there had been a visit by a new neighbor of my Uncle Lester’s at that reunion. Lester lived in the most remote location of all of my relatives; in a very small place that probably has a population of less than 30 people, so the fact that Uncle Lester even had a neighbor was fairly rare but that he had an extraordinary one was virtually unbelievable. The story that was, and the one that is told, says that my Uncle and his son-in-law were playing their fiddles at a bar in one of the nearest real towns of Lewiston Idaho and a man walked up to my uncle and said there was a man in the audience who wanted to play with my uncle and his band. It is said that my uncle asked if he was any good. The answer was “he used to play with Creedence Clearwater Revival”. My 65 year old uncle then said “so does that mean he is any good or not?” “Yes he is good” was the answer and John Fogerty played with my uncle that night and ended up buying a piece of property in Troy, Oregon and started up the Troy Resort (it was managed by the Shiloh Inn at that time and may still be for all I know) so that he had a place to stay when he spent time there. It was during the period of time that he had left CCR in the early 1970’s and was on his self-imposed sabbatical from the band and maybe everything else as well since he ended up in the middle of nowhere. There is a small article about John and his time in Troy on the internet if you want to look it up. At one concert he played in my hometown of Eugene he announced to the audience “I own property in this state of Oregon, I bet you didn’t know that” and to that my sister, mother and the friends I was with yelled out “Yes we do and it is in Troy” and he had a surprised look on his face, I guess he didn’t really expect anyone to know he owned property in a place with a population of less than 30 people. So anyway, the new fact about John showing up at my family’s reunions made those family reunions way more interesting to us than they had ever been before.

I went to the first one of those reunions, after I found out that John might actually attend, with a close friend of mine. John did not come to that one but nonetheless I saw some magnificent scenery and had a good time meeting, for the first time for most of my relatives, some very nice people. I also had a wonderful road trip and took some beautiful photos on it.

John did show up at the second reunion I went to, the first reunion that my sister and I went to together, and since that was only the reason we started to go to these events I had to bring it up, but it is not the real subject of this story. The actual family reunion is a story unto itself which I will save for another time and another story.  The story I want to tell about right now is about the funniest dinner I have ever had and definitely the most fun dinner I have ever experienced at a restaurant.

 To make the events leading up to this dinner somewhat more minimal than they really were, let it suffice for me to say that for the most part it was a very fun road trip with a certain amount of stress along with many other events that were novel to this particular road trip.  My sister and I are very good at traveling together, when one of us needs to stop for any reason we always happily do so, and enjoy each other's company and have the same tastes in food and enjoy eating and drinking the same things for the most part. This road trip had been successful in all ways so far, except for maybe the part that we actually were a day late and a dollar short, but that is part of that other story for another time.

On the last day of this journey, when we were about three hours away from being home (the place we journeyed to for the reunion was eight hours from where we lived so we made it a three day trip - one leisurely day to drive to the location of the reunion, one day for the actual reunion event and one day to travel home), and we were both hungry and we were approaching the last small town on our way home before we would be in a very large city at dead 5:00 rush hour if we waited any longer to eat than we had already waited.  So we decided to eat at this nearest convenient location, it is a well-known resort destination, so we had high expectations that the food should be good and I had read good reviews of it when researching locations in the area. 

We entered the hotel and we immediately got the impression that the place was a bit pretentious but we didn't see any reason to let that deter us from having dinner there. 

We first went to the bar to have a cocktail and relax a bit from the five hours of driving we had just completed. My sister and I both ordered a Bloody Mary from the fairly old waiter that asked us what we wanted. We are Bloody Mary connoisseurs, we can tell you every good place to stop and have a good Bloody Mary in the state of Oregon, and a few other locations in other states and countries as well. These were among the most boring one’s we had ever had and we started giggling when we both sipped on them and thought that very thought, but what did we expect from a seventy year old man who looked like he only drank martini's? It was stupid of us to order one from him in the first place.

A very young waiter noticed us laughing and came over to ask if anything was wrong or did we need anything, and I told him that we wanted to have dinner there when we finished our drinks as there was no point in telling him how terrible the BM’s were.  He told us that he would put our names on the waiting list and then he walked away. 

My sister and I looked around to see who was waiting and there was absolutely no one in the bar, or the restaurant which had barely opened for business. We exchanged a smile with each other over the thought that we would actually have to wait to be seated when there was no one around, but it was a hotel so maybe everyone was waiting in their rooms until it was time to eat. 

We finished our drinks and walked into the restaurant where we were greeted by a middle aged woman.

“Do you have a reservation?”

We looked around the room to the sight of almost all empty tables but politely replied “Yes, we had the waiter put us down for a reservation, it was probably for 6:00. I don’t remember him asking what our name was though.” 

The woman looked in the reservation book and even though I couldn’t read it very well upside down it was obvious there weren’t very many names on it. 

“I don’t see anyone listed here for that time, but if you will be done by seven thirty I have a table that isn’t needed until then, will that work?” 

Well it was likely that our names weren’t there since I don’t remember that I was asked for a name to put down, maybe he thought we weren’t really serious about the reservation. My sister and I looked sideways at each other. It had only been 5:30 when we had gotten there and it wasn’t quite 6:00.

“If it takes us more than an hour and a half to eat there would have to be a problem. Oh, sorry, that will be plenty of time, thank you.” 

The lady took us to a table in the fairly large, and totally empty, dining room, though I did notice four people had just come walking up to the reservation desk as the lady led us to the table.  The table was next to a very large window overlooking the scenic river that the hotel and restaurant were named after so we could at least look out at the beautiful setting the place was in even if the people working there were a bit on the snooty side.  The place might be a bit pretentious but we were hoping the food would live up to what you would expect from a pretentious location. It certainly looked like was possible from the look of the beautiful dining room. 

A waiter came to the table and asked if we wanted a beverage while looking at the menu and I couldn’t help myself.

“We both would like a Bombay Martini, please, shaken not stirred.” 

The order didn’t even get a smile from the waiter and he turned and walked away. 

As soon as he walked off another man came to the table and said something with a very heavy accent, we later figured out he had told us the specials of the day, but there was no way we could have understand what he had just said to us.  It was time to look at the menu.

“So did you understand any of what he just said?”

“Not much, it sounded more like he had marbles in his mouth than an accent though, kind of odd if you ask me.”

“I guess I don’t want any of the specials since I don’t know what they are after hearing them explained in some language that I don’t think even exists.” 

We started to laugh. “I didn’t know dinner was going to include entertainment as well as food but this should be fun, or should I say funny, as well as tasty I hope.” 

Just about then the apparent maître-de walked over to the table behind us and we could over hear him explain the same specials, or at least we assumed they were the same since we still couldn't understand him, to the people at that table.  After the man walked away from the table one of the diners at that table said loudly.

“What did he just say the specials are?  I couldn’t understand anything?” 

Another person at the table answered. “I didn’t understand them either because his accent was so strong.”

Upon hearing what our neighboring diners had said my sister and I looked at each other and we tried to laugh quietly.

There was a small room with two small tables in it which was off to the side of the main part of the restaurant that was close to where we were sitting and we watched as the maître-de and two young men dressed in waiter’s uniforms walked into it and we could hear the man address the young men in perfect English. 

“I want you to move these two small tables together and cover both tables with one tablecloth and put a fifth chair at the opposite end from the doors leading in here. Set the table with place settings for five and then let the hostess know when it is ready.  Do you understand what I want?” 

The two young men replied in the affirmative. 

I looked at my sister and we didn’t even have to say a word before we both burst out laughing.  Our young waiter walked over to the table and looked at the two of us.

“May I ask you what you are laughing about?”

“Yes you may ask and then you can answer us as to why the maître-de talks so weird that no one can understand him when I just heard him speak perfect English to the help?”

“I had a feeling that was why you were laughing. He thinks that his having an accent will impress the customers.” 

“It is impressive alright. I am impressed at what an idiot he is.  No one is going to order the dinner specials because they can’t understand what he is saying.” 

“Let me help you with that part then, we have seafood special that includes a crab cocktail, a small lobster tail and large prawns. Both are grilled and served with a drawn butter sauce along with garlic risotto and a tossed green salad.  We also have broiled lamb chops served with a red wine reduction sauce that is served with a stuffed baked potato and sautéed green beans.” 

“Now that I can understand what the specials are that changes what my order will be. I was going to order from the regular menu but now I want the seafood special.” 

My sister ordered the lamb chops.  As the waiter walked away my sister and I burst out laughing again.  The waiter brought a basket of bread and a plate with an assortment of raw and pickled vegetables with a small dish of dipping sauce and placed the food on the table along with glasses of ice water.  Soon after that the maître-de brought us soup and said something else that was unintelligible as he set them in front of us. 

That was the last straw and as soon as he turned away we started laughing so hard we were practically choking on our soup.  The people at the other table even looked at us because we were laughing so hard but all we could do was try not to look at each other because if we did we immediately burst out laughing. 

The waiter came back to the table and he smiled a little bit. 

“Your dinners should be ready in about fifteen minutes, is there anything else you would like before then?” 

We managed to choke out an answer.  “Yes we need a bottle of the Napa Valley Chardonnay that was on your special wine list.” 

The waiter brought out our wine immediately and the dinner arrived in about the fifteen minutes that he mentioned. He set plates of very fine looking food in front of us and then asked if we wanted fresh ground pepper on anything.  I noticed that the small red potatoes that were mixed with the new white potatoes had been trimmed up to look like mushrooms and couldn’t resist making a comment. 

“Yes I would love to have pepper on everything and could I also get some butter for my mushrooms?” 

“Actually those are all potatoes, the chef just likes to make the food look pretty and he trims the red potatoes up to look like mushrooms but they are really potatoes and I would be happy to bring you some butter as soon as I finish giving everyone fresh ground pepper that wants it.”  He looked at my face when he finished talking and he could tell by the smile I was sharing with my sister that I already knew that there were no mushrooms in the potatoes.  He didn’t say anything but my sister then made a priceless comment. 

“We will make sure we put that in our review.” 

The waiter kind of acted a little nervous and walked away to get the butter I had asked for.  We had ordered a nice bottle of wine so it gave my sister’s comment some credence that we might be having an official dinner and we were dressed up in the nice clothes we brought for the family reunion that we didn’t end up wearing (because we arrived on the day of the reunion instead of a day early like we had thought we were doing, but that is also part of the other story) so we could have been working for a magazine.  Instead of paying cash like we had originally planned I put the meal on my company credit card just to complete the rouse of eating at the restaurant for an assignment. 

The rest of the dinner was a nonevent; we had already had a very interesting dining experience, anything that came after almost choking to death on our soup couldn’t top the entertainment we had already been presented with. It was an excellent meal but it definitely was the most fun I have ever had at a restaurant, still.