{"id":4337,"date":"2010-09-10T19:43:23","date_gmt":"2010-09-11T00:43:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sharons-blog.com\/?p=4337"},"modified":"2010-09-10T19:50:31","modified_gmt":"2010-09-11T00:50:31","slug":"dinner-disappointment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sharons-blog.com\/?p=4337","title":{"rendered":"Dinner Disappointment"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>John and I had carefully planned our 25th anniversary celebration.  <\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;d researched every restaurant in the area.  We really wanted to do more than just go out for a meal, but after calling every place where evening entertainment might be available, we decided we&#8217;d settle on a lovely dinner.  The two most highly rated restaurants (according to friends and internet reviews) were Jake&#8217;s Grill in Old Town Saginaw and Lucky&#8217;s Steakhouse in Bay City.  We settled on Lucky&#8217;s.<\/p>\n<p>Both of us spiffied up.  John looked grand.  He was dressed in nice dress pants and a comfortable long sleeved shirt, (no-tie).  I wore a short black dress with black knit cardigan style top over it.  <\/p>\n<p>This was a special night!<\/p>\n<p>We should have been forewarned when the restaurant wouldn&#8217;t take a reservation for two on Friday night.  <\/p>\n<p>We ran into problems just getting out of our subdivision.  The annual garage sale is tomorrow and lots of folks came in tonight to get a jump on the actual sale.  We couldn&#8217;t get out to the main road.  Our streets were blocked with folks parked on both sides of the street and folks coming and going.  It was a mess.  John is not a patient person, and by the time we got out to M-52, he was angry.  (Not a good start.)<\/p>\n<p>We arrived shortly after 6:00 and were told the wait would be about 15 minutes.  That didn&#8217;t bother us at all.  But we felt that we were way over dressed.  The other &#8220;guests&#8221; were in summer casual casual casual&#8230; (example:  gym short shorts on guys with hairy legs).  Very few looked prepared for a nice dinner.<\/p>\n<p>We went to the bar, where loud obnoxious patrons annoyed us. We could hardly hear each other talk.<\/p>\n<p>Within five minutes we were seated in the dining room and our nice server, Stephanie, did what she could to make our evening feel like an &#8220;event.&#8221;  I ordered a filet mignon, Caesar salad and a potato.  I&#8217;d carefully quizzed her about the restaurant&#8217;s definition of medium versus medium rare steaks.  She assured me that since I wanted a warm center but definitely pink to red, medium would work for me.  But when it came, it was dry and very well-done!  Of course waiting for a second filet to be grilled took forever so I filled up on potatoes.  John&#8217;s prime rib and garlic mashed potatoes were ok but the prime rib was medium well instead of medium.<\/p>\n<p>The dining room was noisy, crowded, and definitely lacked ambiance.  Ponderosa Steakhouse, across the street, would have been better, probably quieter, and we&#8217;d have felt more satisfied and we&#8217;d have spent $20 less.  <\/p>\n<p>The filet was good, but much too salty.  It was if it had been soaked in soy sauce.  <\/p>\n<p>So much for a grand dinner.<\/p>\n<p>We were home by 8:00.  That was our 25th Anniversary celebration&#8230; very disappointing.  Hopefully our fiftieth will be better. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>John and I had carefully planned our 25th anniversary celebration. I&#8217;d researched every restaurant in the area. We really wanted to do more than just go out for a meal, but after calling every place where evening entertainment might be available, we decided we&#8217;d settle on a lovely dinner. The two most highly rated restaurants [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4337","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2010-04-to-07-late-spring-through-summer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sharons-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4337","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sharons-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sharons-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sharons-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sharons-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4337"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/sharons-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4337\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4342,"href":"https:\/\/sharons-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4337\/revisions\/4342"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sharons-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4337"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sharons-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4337"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sharons-blog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4337"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}