I ventured to Sun City yesterday to visit my parents. See, Mom's been telling me about the neighbors' son. He's single, 34, laid-off, and opening a gun shop in Georgetown next month, and I should come over yesterday to meet him because he's been spending a lot of time at his parents' house this week. Oh perfect, because two currently laid-off people would make a wonderful match. Well, neighbor-boy wasn't at his parents' house yesterday, so I essentially made this trip, in my best bib and tucker, all for nothing. But the 'rents and I figured we may as well go out for a late lunch as long as I was there, and we finally decided on Monument Cafe.
They had a chalkboard listing of five or six local farms from which they get their produce, one of which was Monument Cafe's own garden. We looked for it on the way back to the car, walked all around the restaurant, but we couldn't find it. It must be like the Garden of Eden... you know, nonexistent.
My parents each got the club sammich, my dad's without mayo, with sweet potato fries. When the food came out, my dad's sammich had mayo on it, and it amazingly only took our waiter about three minutes to realize something was wrong and to take care of it. Our waiter was not very attentive. Well, actually, my dad seemed to be the High-Tea prince, as he got tea refills almost as soon as he needed them. My mother and I had to wait several minutes and actually flag down the waiter to get our refills. And this waiter doesn't know much about consolidation. He brought two of our drinks out, and then went and got the third (two iced teas and a water). Have you never heard of a tray?? That way, see, you could get everything out in one fell swoop instead of having to make multiple trips. And when my mother asked for a straw, the waiter had to go get one (which somehow took him around two minutes longer than it should have). The servers here have pockets in their white server jackets, so there's no reason our waiter should have been without straws. He never did fill his pocket up with straws. I heard the table behind us ask for a straw at one point, and they later commented that it took the waiter way too long to get said straw.
I ordered the chicken fried steak with mashed potatoes and fruit salad. I expected the CFS to have a crunchier breading than it did, but the breading they used was still good. I enjoyed the CFS. The fruit salad was a Waldorf sort of concoction with skinned apples, bananas, oranges, and pecans. I think the cream sauce should have been thicker, but I wasn't unimpressed with the dish. The mashed potatoes were very creamy and thick, but they tasted like wax. And before you think my taste buds are simply from Mars, I gave my dad a taste and he agreed with me. I think they need to keep the candles out of the kitchen when they're making mashed potatoes. The 'rents enjoyed their meals, too.
I was somewhat tempted to order dessert, but with how flaky our waiter had been, I figured the process of actually getting dessert would take too long, so I declined.
And oh, the very back booth on the right side of the restaurant is apparently where the employees stick all the families with annoying toddlers. My parents and I were seated at the booth right in front of the infamous one, at which point there was a 2-year-old girl sitting there treating the booth like it was her own personal sound stage. I couldn't hear anything either of my parents said to me while that hyena sat behind us. They thankfully left about halfway through our meal, and I could suddenly hear my parents again, but another family with another badly-behaved rugrat was almost immediately seated there. At one point, this kid threw his used straw onto our table. And do you think the parents apologized to us? Nope. Worthless parents with kids who belong in a zoo are obviously not the fault of Monument Cafe, but if you dislike toddlers -- especially misbehaved ones -- as much as I do, simply refuse to sit at the second to the farthest booth on the right side of the restaurant if it is offered to you. You'll thank me.
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