Everyone from the dribbling, yelling, wheelchair-bound granny to the dribbling, yelling, pooping six-month-old brat is dragged out to take part in the weekly tradition that is the seven-hour-long Sunday lunch.
Places are packed with parties rarely numbering less than ten. Smaller families are looked on with suspicion, while couples are often chased out of eateries because any family without at least three generations all living in the same house and eating at the same restaurant table must be thieves or burglars just there to case the joint.
So it was with this thought in mind that me and the wife ventured out into our neighbourhood last Sunday to experience this phenomenon. Perhaps it was the visit I made less than two weeks ago to a Toby Carvery in the UK, where families and friends get through truck-loads of roast potatoes, Swede, Yorkshire Puddings and Roast Beef every Sunday that put the idea in my head.
Although why on earth we decided to go to a TGI Friday’s is beyond me. It was my idea. I admit it. My brain was obviously not working properly that day.
We had been thinking about going to this nice Irish pub we sometimes go to. They do good, simple, cheap food and the atmosphere is nice. But I hadn’t been to a TGI Friday for three years and the unpleasant experience I had had the last time had mysteriously and temporarily been wiped from my mind, so we decided to go there instead. It was also one stop closer on the Metro.
Deep down I knew it was a mistake, as we were led to our table by a waiter wearing a pirate’s hat. What does a pirate’s hat have to do with serving food, I thought? This was what I wanted to ask him. But I didn’t. Maybe it was because I was briefly distracted by the other waiting staff who were wearing bunny ears, what looked like a train driver’s cap, a jester’s hat and another who looked like they had two toilets rolls glued to their head. All this had the effect of numbing the voice deep inside me which was saying: “Get out, run now. The Irish pub is only one stop away.”
So we took a seat in a booth and the pirate took our order. As we waited for what were frankly very over-priced starters – again, the strategically placed waiters’ headgear and the gaudy decorations on the walls including old baseball gloves, traffic lights and pictures of rock-and-roll stars were all numbing the senses and making rationale thought impossible – I became aware of a large family group sitting behind me, and in particular a little boy who repeatedly bashed the back of my head with his TGI balloon. Yet another brilliant helium-filled marketing ploy to take the focus off the pricey but poor food. Genius!
I turned around, ready to proffer a kindly smile that gave the impression I thought he was a lovely child and weren’t his parents lucky to have him, while also subtly hinting that should he continue to keep hitting me, his balloon – and, let’s face it, probably him too – was liable to get a fork jammed into it.
Naturally, it took me a few seconds to create the facial expression that could exude these subtle messages all at the same time. Enough time, it seemed however, for the little angel to have a pre-emptive rebuttal ready to go.
For, as I turned around, he promptly let go with a huge, raspy, burger-encrusted burp right in my face and then gave me a ketchup-stained toothy grin.
I was momentarily stunned, my smile now exuding yet another message that, had it been a speech bubble appearing above my head, would have said: “What the fuck?”.
His parents said and did nothing, ashamed, I like to think, that they had produced such an evil offspring. My wife, sensing my discomfort and ever the sympathetic and caring woman that she is, promptly burst out laughing.
The food took a while to come, it was very average and not at all worth the 50 euro bill. As we waited for the cheesecake dessert – by this time we had become a bit more savvy and had ordered only one dessert and two spoons – I decided to pay a visit to the loo.
Going in wasn’t the problem. From the restaurant there was a pristine white corridor which led to the toilets. Coming back out was where it got interesting. I opened the door back to the restaurant and found myself in a completely different place – a Japanese eatery.
Had the staff and customers of TGI, including my wife, played a joke on me and changed the entire look of the restaurant in the three minutes I’d been having a pee? For a second I thought Jeremy Beadle was going to come out from behind a pot plant and tell me I’d been framed or something. But then I remembered he was dead, so that wasn’t going to happen. I turned around and did the only thing I could think of. I went back into the pristine corridor, like some pervert hanging around public toilets. It was only then that I realised TGI and the next door Japanese restaurant shared the same bogs and I’d taken the wrong door.
After that, I was in no mood for cheesecake. Or balloons. Or Sundays. Next week I’m going straight from Saturday to Monday.
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