The Chill at Milltown

Yesterday was cold. It never made it above 30 degrees. For us that is very cold. The coating of snow that fell the day before was still on the ground. I knew I wasn't going to run and T joked about cycling, but it was not the day for either. Instead, it was a hiking day. We set out after a very late breakfast with the familiar goal of having a late lunch someplace in Carrboro. T expressed a desire for pancakes. Yesterday being Sunday meant that as long as it was before 3 pm, we'd be able to find brunch with something sweet for him and something savory for me.

We wrapped ourselves in what we would later realize was too many layers (it wasn't the tundra after all), and we made our way to the area in our neighborhood where the trails start. The really cool thing about Chapel Hill is that there are rural buffers all through town, through most all neighborhoods, areas where building is not permitted, but hiking is. Typically you follow streams and storm and sewer drains and traipse along behind large houses with fascinating architecture, looking to see who still has Christmas trees, or who has built tree houses at the borders of properties. You also see deer and garbage, but fortunately for cars and and the town's image you don't see too much of either. But with both, when you do, you are surprised.

We came out on Smith Level Road, took a shortcut through Roberson Place and ended up after about 40 minutes from start to finish, in the center of Carrboro. From there, we decided to see if Milltown was open for Sunday brunch. We thought not, but were happy to see they were indeed open. We checked out the menu. No pancakes, but waffles. Not just any waffles, but waffles with fresh fruit, creme fraiche and brown butter. Brown butter! That would do.

T doesn't even look at the menu. I do. I decide on carnitas on a baguette with a side salad and slaw. Mexican, southern and a little upscale. It sounded perfect to me.

We have high hopes when the food arrives. T gets his first and when they place my brimming plate on the table, I do not see it. I see only his waffle. Now, there are times I suffer what can only be called food envy. I wish desperately to be the one readying myself to dive into whatever the other person has and never fully taste my own food because my mouth is watering for some unattainable goal across the table. If only. If only. If only. Indeed.

Not the case here. What I was actually looking at was the burgeoning of "what the hell is this?" on T's face and my own utter and complete devastation that someone decided that fresh fruit equalled grapes and canned mandarin oranges, that creme fraiche was this sour cream looking goo scooped into a plastic container, and that brown butter was in fact a squarely cut off quarter stick of cold yellow butter, also in a plastic container. Oh, and the waffle was the size equivalent of two toaster waffles. If only I did have two toaster waffles glistening with some brown butter, some caramelized bananas and pineapples or some fresh strawberries, blueberries. I think you get the point. The point is, what the hell was this? And how could anyone in their right mind think the tinny taste of mandarin oranges counts as fresh fruit?

I can see the moment of truth. T is getting ready to comment. I know what he is going to say. I chime in, "SEND IT BACK." I do not believe in bad food unless you set out to have bad food. I do this sometimes. It's why I am known on occasion to actually make a conscious decision to eat Chicken Mcnuggets. But when I come to a restaurant that is promising brown butter on waffles, dammit, you better deliver. And if you're out of fresh fruit, come back and tell me or disguise it by taking something frozen, putting it in a pan with the brown butter and some sugar and deliver something with flames leaping off it. Wouldn't be what was on the menu, but I'd be too impressed to care.

The server comes back and T says "these look an awful lot like canned oranges." She looks disturbed. Now, normally, a good server would say, "actually you're right, that doesn't look like what was on the menu, and look they even forgot the brown butter." But she just kind of looked at him like perhaps she had been the one to segment the elusive fresh mandarin, peel away the membrane and then add tiny slivers of aluminum to complete the effect. Trying to get back to the point, I say, "I think he just wants to see the menu again." She gets the menu, leaves the plate and walks away.

T settles on a chicken sandwich with blue cheese and pears. Sounds delicious. We've both had it before and it is quite delicious. He asked for the mayo on the side. Don't get me wrong here, I understand the desire restaurants have to keep people from making huge substitutions, but mayo doesn't count. And if it does count, then I'm inviting the server to come over and doctor me when I'm recovering from food poisoning brought on by my ingestion of too often carelessly stored restaurant mayo. But I digress. No mayo. Got it?

So the sandwich comes less than 10 minutes later and is placed ever so not nicely on the table. The right thing to do would have been to say, "I hope this works out better for you. Can I get you more water for your tea, another beer?" As T is getting ready to take a bite, he sees something. I see it too. What could it be? What is that gelatinous white smoodge goozing out the sides of the sandwich? What indeed. Apparently, in its fermenting state, the mayo developed the beginnings of a brain stem, uprighted itself and spread itself all over the bread, possibly even laughing as it went about its evil deed. This is not good. This is not good for anyone. The waitress walks by. We flag her down. She's definitely avoiding us and I'm not sure why. None of this is her fault and this kind of screw-up happens all the time in restaurants. Even in life, bad stuff happens, right? You just face up to it and deal with it with grace and tact.

She comes over, T says "I asked for no mayo." Waitress says, "Oh, sorry." There is a moment of tentative silence as we wait for her to do her job - scoop the plate, rush it to the kitchen and make it right. Instead, she waits for us to make the suggestion. She's annoyed. Again. T, sensing her disgust, says it sucks and while he's not trying to make it personal, she needs to see to it that the order is right and that basically he's hungry, I got my food 20 minutes before and he just wants the food to be there. She walks off, attitude and plate in hand.

While we are waiting, again, I decide to get back to MY food. My food is quite fine. Nice dense baguette overflowing with velvety pork, studded with effectively warm jalapeno slices and topped with cheddar. The salad was falling off my plate and the balsamic dressing was fantastic. Even the lowly coleslaw was refreshing and made richer by the inclusion of thin slices of red onion.

But you have to remember that I'm eating this on edge. There is a landmine in our playground and it's waiting to blow.

The sandwich comes back, sans mayo, but I'm surprised the sandwich didn't get hurled like a frisbee to us. She didn't quite set it down as much as throw it down and run off. Now, again, in case I need to tell anyone the right way to handle this...You bring the third plate to the table and you say, "I'm so sorry, we've been busy today and I think I was so focused on where we went wrong with the waffle that I forgot the no mayo request. Can you take a look real quick and let me know if your sandwich is OK now?" Nope. Nothing remotely close to that happened and for the rest of the time we sat there, we watched her avoid us. No offer of a refill on drinks, no coming back to see if everything was right this time. Nothing.

Time for the check. I'm not one to confuse bad food with bad service. I say this because I would never not leave a tip if the food was bad, but the service good. I will always give a server the benefit of the doubt if - now understand this - IF they make just a very few attempts at actually caring about my negative experience with the food.

She brought the check. T asked for the manager. She said there wasn't one. Oh. Got it. Time again for me to explain the right thing to do. "I'm really sorry, the manager isn't here today, I can either leave you his name and number or take yours and maybe you can talk tomorrow." I can assure you that if she said anything remotely close to this, the conversation with the manager would have gone like this, "Manager, we had a bad experience with your food, but the server was really great and attentive and tried to make it right. But you know when you put fresh fruit and brown butter on the menu, your customers might actually be expecting that." Seems simple, right? No, she just walked away. She failed at every simple basic fundamental element that makes a decent server. Don't give attitude, don't avoid, don't take it personally, just make it right.

I couldn't leave a tip. I couldn't. It went against everything I have in me not to leave a tip. But I decided that the best tip I could give was a note on the credit card receipt on what not to do in the future. I am very sure we are seen as asses. I am very sure that at some party in town that night when she's sitting back, with chilly attitude and her friends, we are the ones who were anal, we were the ones with the problem, we were the customers waitstaff hate. But I just don't think we were wrong here.

Walking out and walking home, we fumed. We defined good service, bad service and how it really is a simple matter of understanding that shit does happen. No one cares. The only thing people care about is how you handle it. Do you light it on fire and leap around showing everyone, making it worse, or do you flush it with tact and grace?