Now that we have weekends off together, my husband and I make it a habit to do brunch together on Sundays.
We slept in late and wanting to avoid the lines at our usual haunts we hopped our bikes and rode to the home of "moons over my hammy", Denny's. Not just any Denny's, but the one that was renovated on Rockford Grill's dime.
We were sat by a sweet hostess who turned out to be our server. She was a bit awkward with her introduction but that might have been due to the fact that my husband has a beard that Paul Bunyon would envy.
The menu looked great and huge so needless to say it took us forever to look at all the pictures. In the mean time we ordered drinks. After asking what was on tap, and her not having a clue what they had, we suggested she just grab him a lager of some sort. My bold coffee was pretty great and then the beer came.... It was a ice cold Heineken. Which most Vancouver beer snobs know is a Dutch Pilsner and not very good. Easy mistake, for a rookie. We flagged down the nearest person, which happened to be a manager, who had about as much grasp of the english language as our server did of the beer menu. Although polite he struggled to help us in our search for the right beer. "Of course we have rootbeer' he said. No...not rootbeer....lager. We setteled on "Canden Molsen' but not before he suggested a Rickards White (yummy but still not a lager). But make no mistake the beer was ice cold from the first sip to the last. Yay for chilled glasses.
Now for the main event. As true foodies (hahah) we choose our meals based souly on the pictures on the menu. I ordered the banana pecan pancakes and my husband some burger on a cheese bun (who doesn't love cheese buns?). The burger was decent but clearly needed to be intruduced to salt. My food looked great but was alas wasn't what I ordered. Infact I'm 90% sure what I got wasn't even on the menu. It was like half of one kind of pancake and half of another. Plus I'm pretty sure I wasn't supposed to get hashbrowns (but who complains about extra food?). We sent my pancakes back for the right order and I decided to go to work on my massive sides. But there was no ketchup or hot sauce. I was starting to feel like a pain in the a** but I asked for them anyways (we had fries... it needs ketchup). When it was dropped of we were left with tobasco. Maybe its just us but wouldn't you expect Franks or, considering their new hispanic flare to the menu, a Valentina's? When the pancakes finally arrived I looked at my husband "These definitely weren't worth the wait". Oh well.
When the bill arrived we made small talk with our very sweet server. Apparently it was her first day serving... ever! No kidding. This explained everything. She had no support, no guidance, and probably minimal training. Every little mishap would have been avoided if she had a shadow server... anything. Poor girl. Serving is hard and people are mean. Another couple could have gotten really upset or complained that nothing was comped... at least the beer should have been. But we smiled and were kind the whole time (even left a 20% tip).
Our long story short.... we left full, leftovers in hand, and with time and (hint hint) training hopefully ourserver becomes more adept at her craft. We wish her all the best :) read more