The Restaraunt Game

What a treat it is to say "lets go to so and so for dinner tonight" a cry heard many times a week in my household, but not always acted upon, I think the guilt of spending excess money when we have a full fridge stocked with good food. As most we all have our favorites, Italian its Dominicks, Mexican is Casa De Soria or Montezumas, breakfast jaunts are Galloping Hen, Paradise Cafe or Busy bee cafe, the one common thread about these places is that they are all mom and pops places, don't generally enjoy chain restaurants and like to keep good family owned businesses in the green with our patronage. So we are fortunate enough to have the resources to be able to eat out more than most.... Thank Goodness for that! Move to tonight, big sister calls and asks what we're doing for dinner, I had no plans and suggested Dominicks for Italian food, we had a table for 5 and they always greet us with smiles and handshakes here as we are old news at this point. We order appetizers, the drinks the main course and get each in a timely manner ,all hot all served as they are supposed to be served from some old recipe from the homeland some 100 years ago. The waitress is always on top of her game and fills our drinks with 25% left in them and brings Fresh bread over and over again, she was new to us as we'd never had her before but has been there awhile. The same gal usually grabs me and my party when she sees me but was loaded with tables this night. The new/older gal was an awesome server and as I said had our everything on time and hot and refill of everything were finished before we could ever ask for more! She boxed all of our food as we for some reason could not finish the heaping portions that we were given. She finished that up and asked us if we wanted dessert, we all shared Mud pie and the check came shortly after. $100 for five with appetizers,drinks, dessert and food to bring home, not bad for an incredible meal and awesome service. So I generally tip 20% or more for good service, tonight was above that so I left $25 for her tip and walked up to the owner manager whom we know and told him how good the food was and how great the service was, all in earshot of our server! she and the boss both thanked us and hoped to see us soon! Theres' just something about the little place that gives you so much warmth, the reason it becomes a favorite is this consistency of goodness that is given each and every time we go, we even had a different server than usual and that was a new surprise that was enjoyable as was the evening with good food, good company and another day almost finished with more smiles on our faces. Here's hoping that everybody is as fortunate as we are with all of the hole in the wall establishments we frequent, and all of the outstanding experience we have in these places. You can get food anywhere, you can get good food as well, but the combination of good food , good service and a carefree atmosphere is hard to find these days, and the warmth just Isn't found in the chains these day that much I can tell you! Eat out when you can and treat yourself to the atmosphere that you rightly deserve! Yum and no antacids needed!.....Nice