The food here was solid, but honestly, the service was a little goofy. First of all, why is it that some of these restaurants in the smaller towns have no idea what to do with a solo diner? I have no problem travelling alone or eating alone. Trust me, it's by choice. In some examples, it is excessive deference; in some, the coldest indifference; in some, utter bewilderment. In any case, it drives me crazy to see a server's behavior change going from my table to a family of four across the aisle.
Second, I have to tell this story about marinara sauce. Maybe this was a cultural disparity, or maybe this girl was dumber than a box of rocks. You make the call. I ordered a calzone and, when it came out, asked for some marinara sauce. "I don't know what that is. I don't think we have that." "Uh...tomato sauce?" "Oh, sure, okay." And as she's walking away, I think, "Come on, we both speak English here. How can you work in food service and not know what marinara sauce is? And this is a PIZZA HOUSE?" Okay, so maybe they don't call it "marinara" in Scotland. After all, I read that the boom in Americanized Italian cooking in the United States occurred after WWII GIs returned from tours of duty in Italy raving about the food that they had eaten there; so maybe British Italian cooking is different than what evolved in the U.S.
So she comes back with a dish full of...ketchup. Wow. Okay, that was funny. We clearly have a cultural barrier here, for which I can't fault her. The thought of ruining a perfectly good calzone with ketchup offends me, but oh well. Third try: "Uh, actually I wanted tomato sauce, like pasta sauce. Like pizza sauce--what you would put on the pizzas?" "I don't think we have that." Now I'm just stunned. My mind is going through all these wild possibilities, such as, Maybe they don't use tomato sauce on their pizzas here...? Nothing but white pizza? So I splutter, "Wh--uh--what? Don't you make your pizzas with tomato sauce? Any of the pizzas? Like those folks over there, that seems to be a regular pizza, with tomato sauce, right?" "Oh, like THAT stuff? You want that in a dish?" And then she looked at me as if I had a weird skin disease but she didn't want to be impolite but she was failing and still making a face. You know that look, right? So anyway, then she brought me the marinara sauce, but what the fuck.
So the calzone was good--a vegetable calzone, which included corn! And they made me a delightful little chocolate sundae with cookie pieces at the end, so I was mostly satisfied with the experience other than those two minutes which I will never forget as long as I live. read more