Monday, March 5, 2012.
Tired Glasses. Jerks Island Grill.
The slow leak from one of tires persists. I have to pump it up every day to prevent my losing another brand-new $250 tire. Like the one that was on this wheel before. The guys at the tire store say they'll grind out the inside of the wheel and see if that helps. What about a new wheel? I asked. The tire store manager looked as though a tornado had just been spotted. Are wheels that expensive? I've never had to buy one in forty-six years of owning cars, so I have no idea.
After a month, my new glasses are finally ready. My first pair of spectacles in 1962 took only two weeks. Who is benefiting from fifty years of improved optical technology? It's not me, that's for sure.
My new faux-tortoiseshell frames, Mary Ann says, make me look a little hip. "But we'll have to wait and see what your daughter thinks of them," she added. This is the first pair I've had since 1969 that didn't have wire frames.
The bad news is that I can't see well with my new goggles. They're progressive trifocals, but the part I most need--to correct my nearsightedness--is in a section of the lens I can't look through without conscious effort. Instead of sharpening my worldview, the new glasses are fuzzing everything out.
There may be value in this. I read somewhere that our eyes get worse so that our mates' wrinkles and other imperfections are less obvious.
I didn't mention this to MA. She was ferrying me around while the wheel was being worked on, and we lunched together. She suggested the Jerks Island Grill, a single-unit, locally-owned restaurant that for all the world looks like a chain. The theme is Caribbean, with a heavy Jamaican accent. The owners are from that Caribbean country known as St. Tammany Parish. We liked it pretty well in the first few times we went there. But as quickly as the Marys try newly-opened eateries, they leave them behind, and we've not been back for two years.
Mary Ann ordered ribs--standard grilled kind, like at Houston's. I had the red bean soup and pork Negril, a kind of jerk pork on top of Jamaican-style rice and peas with chimichurri sauce and grilled vegetables. The food was reasonably good.
The servers were friendly but inept. I got the feeling of understaffing--either in terms of number or competence. The slowness irritated MA first, but she has a low threshold. I only became antsy when I knew that the thing that drives me nuts was about to happen. And it did. Here was the soup. Now watch the clock on your cellphone until the next minute turns. That's how long it was before the entree arrived. The first spoonful of soup was headed toward my lips when the pork platter landed.
Waiters often get indignant when I tell them that under no circumstances should any two of the courses I've ordered show up at one time. But it's amazing how often that happens. It's the most maddening problem in service today (with the possible exception of waiters who ask whether you want change back from your cash payment).
In this episode, the waitress actually asked me whether I were finished with the undiminished soup. Not whether there were anything wrong, but whether I wanted it boxed up. If she hadn't vanished so soon afterwards, I would have said that I left the soup alone because I needed to choose one dish to eat and the other to get cold, and the soup was cheaper. But I don't think this one would have grasped my point even then.
I lay this problem at the plugs of the computerized systems restaurants now use to flash orders back to the kitchen. Used to be that the waiter would call for the courses as needed. Now cooks just crank them out. Finish this one, start that one, with no regard to how the diner is progressing. Still, a server should know better.
If you're in the restaurant business, would you please have a meeting with cooks and servers to tell them not to be guilty of the above? Sheesh!
I did the radio show from home, still trying to make my new glasses work. Again and again, I got names of callers wrong because I couldn't read them from my screen, which is fuzzy unless I cock my head a certain way.
After the show, I took a break and flopped down on the davenport. Mary Ann picked a movie called "What's Your Number?" As in, the number of men the women in the screenplay had slept with. This started out funny, but soon crossed MA's offensiveness line. I kept watching because I never give up on anything, but the best I can say is that it's almost a good movie. Seems to have been dumbed down for an audience of which we emphatically are not members. Mary Ann kept watching because she said she didn't want to waste the six dollar rental. I'm glad I didn't choose this film.
Jerks Island Grill. Covington: 70437 LA Hwy 21. 985-893-1380.
It's over three years since a day was missed in the Dining Diary. To browse through all of the entries since 2008, go here.
