Cal and I have eaten at the Trident Grill on a two occasions. Most recently we checked it out on a weeknight hoping to catch the first game of the World Series. It wasn’t too crowded but there was enough people to give it a decent ambiance. We sat underneath one of the bigger televisions so Kevin and Cal could get a good view of the game, I don’t really care who wins so I conceded the seats.

The food at the Trident is an attempt at a sort of Mid Atlantic cuisine and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. They offer some classier bar dishes like steaks and seared tuna but never really deliver on them. Their real appeal is in the simple fare they offer, burgers, crab cakes, potato skins.

The first time we visited the restaurant, I ordered the crab cake sandwich. It was basically a burger swapped out with a crab cake which isn’t a bad thing. The crab cake was a little rich, even for a crab cake but it was well crafted and the bun was sturdy enough to handle the crumbling bit of fried crab. The fries weren’t at all memorable but sometimes that’s enough for fries. As long as they aren’t offending you by merely being on the plate then they are acceptable. Cal had the seared tuna with mashed potatoes and broccoli. He wasn’t too thrilled with it but liked it nonetheless. I think the generally good natured waitress had more to do with how much Cal enjoyed our first visit. She gave him a gentle ribbing for standing at the bar to order beers while she could have just as easily took his order.

This time I opted for a cesear salad with grilled shrimp for some reason.

It was actually a pretty good salad.  The shrimp were well cooked but a tad under seasoned.  The dressing was creamy but still had slight bight that made it the appropriate contrast to the blandish shrimp and croutons.  The lettuce was fresh and crisp, so essential to a cesear salad.

Cal had a burger.  If you ask me he put way too much castsup on it.  The thing was just loaded with dripping condiments.  We weren’t at Carl’s Jr. for christ’s sake.  The bun stood up however, worth big points in the What the Hell book.  Cal said burger was cooked to perfection, I tested his hypothesis with my fork.

I concluded that it was cooked to his specification but didn’t taste it because the fork test sufficed.  I was a little skeptical still, it just didn’t quite have the look of a superior burger  He loved it though, not the way Cal loves everything we eat, but in a way that made me think it might actually be a good burger.  He later placed it in his top five burgers in town, behind Belushe’s and Bob Dobbs but before Zinburger.  He literally felt this good about it:

Kevin had spaghetti which wasn’t even worth a picture.  It was the special of the night.  Thick eggy noodles circled a dense meatball that Kevin accused of having no flavor.  The dish also lacked any serious amount of sauce, forgivable for straight spaghetti but with the meatball a serious problem.  I think Kevin dropped the ball on this one, he shouldn’t have ordered spaghetti at a bar, especially not as the special.  He was happy enough though I think, we’d all split a sampler platter to begin with of which the chicken tenders or the potato skins were the real stand outs.  The mozzarella sticks were luke warm and the marinara they came with was thick as a paste.  I wondered why they didn’t use the pastey marinara for Kevin’s spaghetti but I guess it’ll just be one of those mysteries we never figure out.

Colin showed up about half way through our dinner with his girlfriend.  They shared a steak that came with mashed potatoes and broccoli.  I’m pretty sure Colin would eat just about anything so when he said his steak was pretty lame I believed him.  It looked pretty lame anyway.

Again I’d chalk this up to a mistake in ordering.  I think that the Trident’s menu is too big and they should focus on the things they do well.  That being said, they have created a really comfortable bar atmosphere where you could go and spend a couple of hours by yourself and not be bothered.  Probably the best feature of the Trident is the absence of students and general dick holes.  They also have a pretty decent selection of beers on tap including, Blue Moon, Harp and Arrogant Bastard one of which Cal spilled all over me at the end of the night.  Despite the wet pants and the odd ingestion of a cesear salad, I give the Trident Grill seven potato skins.

Fusion Wasabi tries too hard. That’s the lasting impression I have of the little sushi restaurant on Craycroft just South of Broadway. From the blue tinted light in the bathroom to the stupid name, Fusion Wasabi offers several missteps and few actual pluses.

One of the few pluses was actually the service.  I never caught our waiter’s name but he seemed like a good guy and was all over the three or four tables that were occupied while we were there.  He also switched the television to the ALCS so we could watch the Rays jump out to a sharp lead over the ridiculous Red Sox.  They also had sushi on their happy  hour menu which made it much more affordable without the all you can eat option.

Their roll selection was full of gimmicky rolls that had names like the Pink Lady, which we tried (meh) and the sky blue wasabi fusion roll which we didn’t.  The standard barometer roll that both Cal and I use is the vegas roll.  It’s the least sushi of any sushi you could possibly eat and consequently we both feel that if you can’t at least do it right, why are you even in the game.  Fusion Wasabi’s vegas roll left a little to be desired.  It tasted okay but while most sushi places go all out and offer a hulking slab of fried delight, Fusion Wasabi presented a thin, tight roll.  Their sky blue wasabi crunch roll was pretty good but I had no idea what was in it or even on it.

Probably the real winner of the meal was the red snapper nigiri.  They must have lucked out with a nice piece of snapper because it practically melted on top of the little square of rice it was resting on.  There was some mystery nigiri that we didn’t order that we thought might be yellow tail but it tasted so rank, I almost garfed as I forced it down.

I can’t really recommend Fusion Wasabi but I won’t say we had a bad time eating there.  Perhaps if the rest of your family wants to go to Risky Business you could hop over and grab some red snapper nigiri.  I give Fusion Wasabi 5 weird gimmick sushi rolls.

-Josh Conzemius

It must stem from my love of people watching. Which makes Tucson Meet Yourself an observatory wet dream. Valarie, Sean and I arrived on the last day of TMY just in time for lunch and just in time to catch a martial arts display of some kind. I’m all for the arts, even the martial ones, but when I run into a group of nerds that I’m sure could kick my ass, I get kind of uneasy. We also ran into Andrew and Star almost immediately. Andrew gave a pretty satisfactory report on the Turkish food booth, although he said a lot of the food he ate was cold.

We were pretty hungry so we decided to check out the low riders and craft booths after we ate so we beelined for the food court. There were literally too many to choose from. Ranging from Hungarian to Laotian there was literally something for everyone. We checked out a few booths, made some mental notes, and then decided first on Costa Rica. I was pretty excited for the Costa Rican food, since Sarah had mentioned beforehand it was the one place she and Josh had wanted to hit but didn’t quite make it. I ordered a tamal. It came wrapped in a banana leaf and was studded with tender shredded chicken and garbanzo beans. It was, without question, the best tamal I’ve ever eaten. Normally, I douse the things with salsa but here salsa would have been an unwelcome distraction. It had the perfect amount of fall apart and stick together. Valarie concurred, she had ordered a picadillo that was pretty terrific as well. Ground beef mixed with potatoes on top of a corn tortilla with just the right amount of seasoning. Both dishes had the feel of something well loved and well prepared. I wish I had taken a picture but I was too busy stuffing the thing in my face.

Everywhere I looked there were people trying to eat foods they did not know how to eat.  There’s no real elegant way to eat something off of a stick but I saw a guy eating a meatball out of his palm like he was feeding a horse.  There was also a woman Sean spotted swatting at everyone who stepped in her path with a rolled up newspaper like it was a machete and she was cutting through deep jungle brush searching for some mystical treasure.  I’m pretty sure she just really needed a strudel.

Sean decided to skip the Costa Rican booth and went for one of the two Laotian ones instead. I joined him and we got a few meat skewers and a couple of egg rolls. These were not really up to snuff. They tasted okay but as Andrew reported earlier, they weren’t hot and suffered for it. We walked around a little more and Valarie decided she wanted Laotian as well and we hit the other booth. It was much better. She got an actual kabob which was, “delicious.”

I didn’t try it but I did have some of the other meat on stick that she ordered before she wasn’t getting a kabob. The chicken was nice and moist, slipping of the stick without incident. The steak was a nice piece of flank steak but it was skewered long was which made it a little difficult to pull of the stick but once you got it off it was worth it. Sean and I both felt duped by the crappier Laotian booth.

We kicked around a little bit longer searching for the next booth that was going to do it for us.  Sean and I debated the merits of a long sleeve and shorts combo.  I think it can work if you’re untucked and casual but the guys we were mocking had dress shirts tucked into what I guess would be called dress shorts.  They must only make them for men between the ages of forty and fifty five who have enough money to regularly golf but not enough to buy a boat.

We watched some African dancing for awhile and then sort of wandered into the Pascua booth which was serving fry bread. There are few joys greater than eating a good piece of fry bread. It falls somewhere between orgasm and getting a cast off your arm. This Pascua fry bread did not disappoint. It was light and airy with a fried, crisp outer shell. It was so soft, I wanted to rest my head on it and and take a sweet little nap right there in the middle of Tucson Meeting Itself.

Sean got on topped with red chile. It was seriously some of the best red chile any of us had ever eaten. It was rich and earthy with just a hint of heat that added flavor but didn’t overpower. It was the perfect contrast to the fry bread, the thick warm chile sauce soaked the interior of the folded fry bread.

I went with the full on Indian Taco. I don’t think it was quite as good as the Indian Taco’s (that’s right, I capitalize Indian Taco, have you ever fucking had one?) at the San Xavier Mission but what is? The bean to ground beef ratio was a little heavy but it was all made up for with the delectable fry bread. I don’t toss the word delectable lightly. I have a slight aversion to the word (I’ve only been to the restaurant Delectables once and never told anyone about it since that would require actually saying the stupid word) for whatever reason but when that’s the word that describes it best, I’ll use it. I asked for extra lettuce and cheese but I don’t think she charged me or gave it to me so the taco was a little light in that area as well. Still it pretty much blew me away.

I also got a cinnamon tea, the last cinnamon tea actually, they ran out of ice. Which just made it all the more sweet. It was better than the Laotian sweet tea which had kind of a leafy stick taste. The cinnamon tea was sort of like a tea made with a watered down stick of Big Red, in a good way. While Sean and I were waiting for the fry bread, Valarie went and got some churros. Oddly, these churros came without any sprinkled powder sugar. That, or Valarie licked it off.

They were kind of a disappointment. After the fry bread we wandered around a little more, kicking ourselves for being so full with no room to try some of the other booths. We tried to hang around long enough to be hungry again but the hip hop dance demonstration wasn’t all that great, it didn’t seem like anyone was going to get served. I did finally figure out which dance The Wop is which can only increase my enjoyment of old school rap music. The low riders were pretty nice. I kind of wished some of the owners had been hanging around to tell us more about the cars but they were still fun to look at anyway.

We did make it back inside the food court to get some drinks for the way out. There was one booth selling aguas frescas that continually had a huge line. We popped in the booth just before about twenty other people. Sean got a lemonade that was sickly sweet and pure. It tasted like straight lemons and sugar. Valarie got a watermelon drink that had none of the fake syrupy watermelon taste. I got my favortie aguas fresca, tamarindo. They were perfect finishers to an almost perfect day of eating and people watching.

Whatever the reason, I relented and went with Cal last Wednesday.  There were a few other people in the restaurant when I got there at 6:30, which I only make note of because we go to so many places where we are the lone diners making our experience a tad awkward.  There was a bowl of complimentary chips and salsa on the table and a bowl of limes.  The salsa was fair, merely acceptable.  There was a selection of hot sauces on the table that I thought was a nice touch, but they didn’t really make up for the average salsa.

The interior is odd, sort of desert island-ish without any antecedent except for the fact that they serve seafood.  Not a death blow by any means, it was actually kind of kitschy in a good way.  We started with an appetizer of ceviche.

The ceviche was not very good.  There were no scallops or any fish, just shrimp.  It was also tomato heavy which made for kind of an odd mix.  I’m not kidding you when I say Valarie and I made a ceviche that is easily four times this good.  But ceviche could very from day to day so I’m not going to let this review hinge on this disappointing dish.  Cal ordered some kind of shrimp dish that he’s been raving about for months in attempt to lure me to this restaurant.

It was basically some shrimp in a jalepeno cream sauce topped with some cheese.  The addition of fries I found odd but not without charm.  I’m not sure why rice is also included, or the terrible salad for that matter.  Mine came without fries but with the tasteless salad.  Cal wasn’t disappointed with his dish.  I have no idea what it is actually called but there is a picture of it on the menu.  I have to admit the jalepeno cream sauce was good.  It was very rich and the cream addition allowed for the taste of the jalepenos to permeate the shrimp without the heat.

I ordered the shrimp endiablados which was really just shrimp in an adobo sauce.  The shrimp were cooked well and were infused with the adobo sauce, it just isn’t one of my favorite flavor profiles.  It came with three worthless flour tortillas that didn’t stay together for shit.  It was also twelve dollars which I found excessive.  I thought I’d mention that since Leigh admonished me last time for not mentioning the even more overpriced food at El Mezon del Cobre (though their food is much better).

I would probably wouldn’t eat here again, the menu was one of those where everything looks equally unappetizing so you can’t decide what to be disappointed by.  Most of the dishes seemed really over thought.  But if forced, I could probably have a good time there, toward the end of the meal a female duo of guitar and flute started playing and they were actually pretty good.  I especially liked when the flautist warmed up with the theme from the Pink Panther which is my grandpa Jack’s favorite movie.

I give Mariscos Chihuahua five shrimp dipped in something nondescript.  Most of those points come from the atmosphere which some people are perfectly willing to pay for.

I loathe the term gourmet as an adjective, in virtually every context. It’s technically a noun but by common bastardization it has turned into a sometime adjective. Jimmy John’s commits this sin in the worst way possible, it advertises its sandwiches as being “gourmet,” yet no real gourmet would ever set foot in such a hackneyed establishment. Gourmet to Jimmy John (If he even exists, I doubt but just this once, I’m hoping there is some dickhole somewhere named Jimmy John who opened a sub par sub shop that took off despite its mediocre offerings.) must mean really chewy, dense bread and tons of mayonnaise.

I went to Jimmy John’s on a random afternoon. I had eaten one of their sandwiches before at the behest of Travis Spillers. I’m not try to call Travis out as a Jimmy enthusiast but it was his idea. We ordered them for lunch on a Saturday, I got some kind of club. I don’t remember which one exactly but it doesn’t matter, it tasted like a shot of mayonnaise with a stale bread backer. I’m serious, the mayo ate through the bread and was about to take over my body like Spiderman’s alien costume (nerd alert) but I was able to stuff it back into the bag and hurl it against the wall just in time.

This time I just got a roast beef sandwich.  Now Jimmy John’s has a bunch of advertising telling us how fast their service and delivery times are and to be fair they can back it up.  I think my sandwich was done before I was even sure that it was the one that I really wanted.  It was definitely done before I took my wallet out of my pocket.  I got a drink and some chips which still made it in under ten bucks which is pretty good.  The sandwich however wasn’t.  It was tough to chew.  The bread was white, no other options existed or at least I wasn’t offered any, and doughy.  It’s fine to just offer the one style of bread but you should at least make it tasty.  They also use shaved lettuce strands which is really just code for we use shitty lettuce.  The tomatoes were not quite ripe and I got an end slice, not a slice toward the end, an end slice.  There was again the slick salve of mayonnaise coating the inside of the sandwich like edible (barely) caulking.  The sandwich also had cheese on it, I think it was provolone but I couldn’t really taste it.

After two visits I feel confident that Jimmy John’s is a complete waste of everyone’s time, from the construction crew that put it together to the people that work there to the unlucky saps who actually eat there.  If you do happen to be one of the few devotees to Jimmy John’s may I recommend that you check out their website:  www.jimmyjohns.com and purchase some of their “Jimmy Gear.” (Which is not clothes for your penis, I know what you’re thinking perverts.)  I give Jimmy John’s Gourmet Sandwiches three extra dollops of mayonnaise on your sandwich which you did not want in the first place.

Washing the soup pots took half an hour alone.  Not that long in actual time but when you realize it makes up a quarter of your work shift you really start to hate it.  But the worst part of that shift was making the cookies.

The cookies came in these freezer packs that were just huge lumps of frozen dough.  The cookies were already separated into cookie sized portions but were all frozen together in weird formations.  I had to chip and break and generally mangle the fucking things until I cracked off the two dozen required for the next day.  On top of that there were four kinds of cookies.  One day I sliced my hand open with the chisel that I had taken from my garage to try and pry the cookies apart.  That was it.  I was pissed off because I had cut my hand open and I was pissed that there was nothing they would do about it since I was the idiot that brought the fucking chisel.  I started to resent the five to seven shift more than a white sixteen year old boy in small town America had the right to resent anything.  That night I purposely burned the cookies.  Tall Ugly was livid, “People love us for these cookies!” I rebuked that, “I’m pretty sure they’re here for the mini pizzas.”  I was advised not to get too smart and Tall Ugly made the cookies and told me to end my shift early.

Pretty soon I was burning the cookies every shift.  Instead of switching me off that ridiculous shift or firing me outright, I was just not allowed to make cookies.  Tall Ugly made them every night and Short Fat never knew the difference.

When I was 16 I got a job at Schlotzsky’s. Their slogan was and still is: Funny Name, Serious Sandwich. A more apt slogan would be: Stupid Name No One Can Spell, Average Sandwich on Vaguely Compelling Bread but I guess it just doesn’t have the same ring to it.

I worked there during my sophomore year of high school with two other guys from my school, Brian Pinnick and Jeff Stewart. I didn’t know either of them that well but I was friends with Brian until I moved away. I think Donnie Tuffley also made the bread in the morning. I lived with Brian and Donnie until an event more suited to a different blog took place. There were two managers, a day and a night. I’ll call the day manager Short Fat One With Poor Haircut, not because I don’t remember her name but because that’s what her name was. By the same line of reasoning the night manager was named Taller Ugly One Who Had Poor Taste In Men. Or just Short Fat and Tall Ugly. There were only a handful of us that worked there, in addition to Brian Jeff, Donnie, and I there was a dude named Mike who went on a Mormon mission to Africa and came back town a few years later addicted to meth. It was also at Schlotzsky’s that I was introduced to the Vest family.

Sean Vest was the oldest of the Vest kids, of which there were four. Sean was the least popular, least interesting, and least appealing to any group in any way. He was the oldest person who worked there aside from Short Fat and Tall Ugly but he was still only in his early twenties. He was a sad sack completely devoid of any joy except some kind of weird roll playing game he would sometimes talk about. I at least gathered that there was a loose confederacy of losers that he tagged along with or after so I wasn’t completely worried that he was going to hang himself in the walk in, just fairly worried. The Vests were half Vietnamese and one of his younger brothers told me once that Sean was always telling people that he wasn’t Asian at all. You might think that all this adds up to someone I wouldn’t bother remembering but I do. For one reason. Sean Vest was the first person I ever saw put ranch dressing on Pizza.

Was this the culinary impetus to which I trace my love of food experimentation?  No, probably not, once as a  child I put cake frosting on a Lender’s egg bagel (not as bad as it sounds).  After inquiring about what the hell he was doing, Sean said, “You know who does this right?  Gumby’s Pizza in Lawrence.”  Gumby’s Pizza?  I’d never heard of it.  I spent a lot of time in Lawrence visiting relatives and what not at that point but we’d never had Gumby’s and my grandfather is a pizza aficionado.  We always went to the Pizza Shoppe with its Andy Capp cartoons festooned all over the place.  Sadly, Gumby’s, I later learned in great detail, is one step above Black Jack or maybe one below, hard to say.  But they did give you a little packet of ranch dressing every time.  I think that what Sean’s dalliance with ranch dressing that day in the prep area at Scholtzsky’s ignited in me was the idea that there were these restaurants out there that did things differently.  That I needed to try.  That I had to try.

Lickity was my boss the entire time I worked in catering. One of many bosses actually, but the top one. Since he was the big cheese – head of all dining operations for the Student Union – and I was a lowly server, we rarely had any direct personal contact, but on those rare occasions that we did he always made it memorable.

There’s really no delicate way to put it, Lickity was a total dope, a dim-witted imbecile of breathtaking proportions. Looking him in the eye was like staring at a fish, except you might get a reaction from a fish. He was the kind of clueless boob too stupid to die, as if even the universe didn’t consider him worth the effort. One time he backed a lawnmower into a swimming pool. The lawnmower was electric, yet he still walked the earth unscathed.

A balding, pear-shaped man, Todd had the sloped, shoulderless bearing of someone who was constantly melting. When he actually bothered to make an appearance in catering the chief physical impression he left was that he had an enormous head. It looked like it was filled with water for a journey across the desert, like a camel hump. But looks had nothing to do with his notoriety; his actions made him the stuff of legend.

Todd fancied himself an idea man, he was brimming with them, too many to contain in that swollen melon of his. When he wasn’t coming up with alliterative new theme-days for the various cafeterias in the building (March Meatloaf Monday Madness) or planning some new degrading addition to our uniforms (nothing screams fine-dining like a surly teen in a beret) he was busy penning an urgent new warning or announcement for our edification.

Lickity ruled by the bulletin-board memo and we loved him for it. We’d gather around each new proclamation like hungry puppies to a swollen teat. Not only did they address the vital subject matter of the day but they were a marvel of mangled syntax and crimes against grammar. It was a great way to rally the troops. Our chests swelled with loyalty as we read such classics as “Safety Alert: Are you playing with those pimples on your face?” and “Did you pay for what you are chewing on?” How could we not become better employees under his firm, guiding hand?

One day a memo appeared that actually generated a fair amount of speculation and intrigue on our part. “Are you ready for PIP?” it asked nobody in particular. We didn’t know.

That memo was followed a few days later by another posting outlining just what PIP was. It turned out that it stood for Pride in Presentation; Todd’s latest flash of genius. Much more than an excuse for a stupid acronym, Pride in Presentation was a whole philosophy, a new way of food service life, encompassing everything from renaming certain dishes (Swedish meatballs became Southwest Serenade) to correct employee posture.

Todd wanted PIP to permeate every aspect of the food service department – from the way we served meals to the language we used. PIP would become a noun, a verb, an adjective under his plan. We’d greet each other in the hall, “I’m feeling PIP today, how about you?” “That is so PIP.” “You really PIP’d that one.” It was his grandest idea yet. In other words, it was utter horseshit.

The memo was accompanied by a large box full of cardboard signs with “PIP” printed on one side and “Pride in Presentation” printed on the other in raised block letters. We were instructed to hang them throughout the building, mobile-like, reinforcing our commitment to excellence. Within days, most of them were nestled in urinals throughout the building, reinforcing our commitment to Lickity.

Apart from the initial memo, the signs, and a few minor touches, none of us were sure how the PIP philosophy would fully manifest itself. We got a better idea a few weeks later.

It was one of those big, nondescript dinners, some civic group, awards ceremony or retirement banquet, we did them all the time. Minutes before serving, I was back by the prep station with a few of my catering buddies. We’d already done the first round of beverages and had finished plating the food. Standing there waiting for the cue to start carrying trays into the ballroom, we were like a professional, well-oiled machine, only not.

Kyle was trying to throw a pad of butter in some guy’s pocket, Larry appeared to be crafting an impromptu explosive device, and Dave was so stoned that he was eating parsley out of a plastic bucket like a turtle. We could hear the crowd getting restless for their dinner. All systems were go. Then Lickity showed up.

Like a food service Patton he walked among our ranks, eyes squinting, looking for the smallest detail out of order. He stopped by a tray and leaned over, sniffing at the warm plates. Lifting the aluminum cover off of one, he released a mushroom cloud of steam. He grimaced. The room fell silent. Looking up at us, his brow furrowed, Lickity said in a tone serious as death, “The potatoes.”

Silence.

“These potatoes look horrible. They look boring.”

What did he expect? Two hours ago they were powder.

Todd’s face suddenly brightened. I knew that look. Sweet Jesus, he was having an idea. This was going to be good.

Snapping his fingers like a Vegas showman, he blurted out, “Paprika!”

Silence.

“These need paprika!”

It was so quiet you could hear Dave chewing parsley. Todd became increasingly agitated, like he was dealing with a bunch of fools.

“Don’t you get it? It’s simple, PIP.”

Pride in paprika?

“Paprika – red, potatoes – white. Red on white, school colors, Pride in Presentation. This is everything I’ve been talking about.”

Nobody mentioned the school colors were actually red and blue.

Lickity straightened up, full of resolve. “These potatoes aren’t going out on the floor until they’ve got paprika on them.”

Did he really want us to redo all three hundred plates? What was he, stupid? Oh…yeah.

One of the other managers, a queenie New Yorker named Rich never had any trouble speaking his mind. “You’re an idiot Todd. Those people are hungry and by the time you put your stupid paprika on those plates the food will be cold and you’ll have a ballroom full of pissed-off customers.”

But there was no turning back. Lickity was a man possessed. He snapped into action and began barking orders. It was his time to shine. It was his PIP moment. “You…go down to the pantry and get paprika, lots of it. You…start taking these lids off.”

And so it went, paprika was fetched, potatoes were dusted and Lickity’s place in the dumb-ass hall of fame was cemented.

Rich was right, of course. By the time we finished with the paprika, the meal was over a half hour late, the food was room temperature at best and there were three hundred royally pissed-off people to deal with. It was terrific. A fine bit of near total chaos, a real cluster-PIP. Best of all, no one even noticed the fucking potatoes.

Shortly after the paprika fiasco, somebody began altering Todd’s beloved PIP signs. Eventually they were completely removed and are probably sitting in a dusty box somewhere. I have one. It’s a little bent and has a few stains here and there but it’s weathered the years pretty well. On the one side, you can still clearly make out the “PIP”, a reminder of that great failed experiment. On the other side, a few of the letters have been removed, changing the motto from “Pride in Presentation” to “Pride in resent”, a fitting legacy for the man known as Todd “Lickity” Split.