The Pearl Screwed Up…
Its nasty cold & ultra windy this November night but that won’t deter our dinner date out!
Us 5 “goils”, (girls that haven’t been girls in 65+ years), meet at 6:10 promptly, in our Paragon’s Apartment House’s lobby. This for our ritual Saturday date.
“Come Hell, or Highwater, or Rotten Weather …we go” is our motto.
We are trying a new restaurant that Betsy one of our gang found & suggested.
You heard of “The Gang that Couldn’t Shoot Straight” …well this is “My Gang that Couldn’t Walk Straight”).
Betsy phoned me about this idea I gleefully said, “Betsy you make the reservation. Sounds good”.
(I am relieved as it is I who is always burdened with the reservation chore. oh, poor me)! 😥
Off we go on this unpleasantly frigid trek to this different eatery.
Meredith & I move ahead as we are the only “Pearls” that are somehow managed to move and talk at same time. Thus she & I, hit The Clara Cookery Restaurant, first.
“What name is the reservation in, what time, and for how many she asks, like in one question”, as she greets us half- frozen “goils” on his long line of waiting patrons.
Merdith gave her the info he keeps hammering on her computer screen, but finally, she raises his eyebrows and declares, “We do not have that reservation AND we are fully booked ladies” …dismissing us, annoyed. “Next” …
She is fuming which is so easy given her personality. We are left embarrassed & lost.
Betsy along with the other laggers of Pearls…are not even in sight, yet, as we search the Avenue for them, from our perch. 👀👀.
Meredith and I are blocking the small, crowded entrance…therefore the only other standing room for us… back is into the frosty night on the sidewalk. 😝😮
Finally, still chatting & strolling like it's a sunny warm, lazy afternoon… here comes the rear end of our party. 👵👵👵🧓🧓
…. Well, when Betsy arrived was informed of our situation, she marched up to the hostess, to tell her SHE had phoned herself and SHE was given the 6:30 reservation. Both the restaurant management and we Paragon Pearls were upset.
The mystery got solved with the manager being sent for. 🕵️♀️
Betsy had the reservation for their branch way downtown… not this restaurant in our uptown, neighborhood. She didn’t know that they had 2 Manhattan locations…
With long, red faces we left 🥵…with no restaurant reservations, for which on Saturday night, are never available in our neighborhood at the last minute.
“Woe is We”!
We Paragon Pearls huddled in resignation… then decide to parade up to the diner, our last hope for dining tonight. It is 7 blocks from where we were, but it is our night out…& we ain’t going home!
Lucy & are now a walking pair, ahead, of the rest, when I remember the large “Rosie’s Restaurant” across the street up a street or 2. When I check…luckily, they have table for us.
It is not a favorite haunt of ours… (& it's having a table for us, plus a few empty ones, tells it all) … but as they say, hungry, frozen old women… without reservations, cannot be choosy.
I hurry to grab the table, after yelling while waving frantically to the other Pearls to come. They are deaf-ish, yakking away, so they keep rolling onward in the direction of the diner.
Little Lucy has the task of racing up to them, then steering them to “Rosie’s” …where I hold on to our table…for dear life!
I tell the owner ‘“Rosie, if you don’t get us a bottle wine pronto, with lotsa bread, we’ll bite you… since we’re hungry, cold, old bitches” …. Grr-GRR!
Rosie laughs because she knows me about 20 years.
Three of the group had various pasta dishes with chicken, they were tasty, but I ordered Rosie’s suggestion… I loved it!
The others were satisfied with what they ate… but Lucy announces, hand on her hip, “I’m never coming to this place, again! My salmon was awful…too salty & too well-done, for my liking”!
I’m snap because I warned her NOT to order salmon here. It's not sold enough in “Rosie’s”.
Lucy, (The Stubborn), always complains about something anyway. LOL!
My Fisherman’s catch fish stew with a basket of crusty bread was delicious.
Its pink broth was garlicky, buttery and spiced just right. Fresh clams, sweet mussels, a piece of fish and my favorite…calamari.
🙄AND now I’m in charge of reservations… once again…the Paragon Pearls decided.
