My partner, five-year-old and I went here on the weekend of July 4th and had a bizarre, somewhat frightening experience. The short story is that after an ok meal, the owner accused us of stealing / trying to rip them off. They accused us of this after putting out of view the only evidence that would have confirmed either of our positions. And of course she threatened to get the cops involved.
Here's the longer story: The business only takes cash. Our meal came out to $38 and some change, and I wanted to give about a 20% tip. I put two twenties on the table and my partner put in the third 20. Something told me that it might be kind of complicated to give them $60 and ask them for $13 change. Perhaps it was the fact that our first elderly server asked my partner if she wanted sweet or unsweet tea three times (though in the end, she did get it correct). So I decided that the least complicated option would be to ask them for change for one of the twenties, and then leave the exact amount on the table.
You're probably thinking that you can guess where the issue happens, but you would be wrong.
I brought the $20 up to the owner and asked for change and she came back with correct change. She said, "You gave me a twenty, right?" and I said "Yes."
I put $47 on the table, double and triple-checking because it's been a while since I had to pay with cash. Then I went to the bathroom for the second time at the restaurant. The banana pancakes I'd just eaten were about to put me through an ordeal.
While I was in the bathroom, I get a text from my partner reading, "The lady thinks maybe you gave her a $5 and she gave you change for a $20?" I responded with "No I gave her a 20, all I have are twenties. I just went to the atm." I'd forgotten that my partner had also thrown in a 20, but it just didn't occur to me while taking a difficult crap after a weird lunch.
BTW, up until this point, they'd been relatively nice. They officially close at 1pm, but they'd invited us in for lunch at 12:30pm. My bathroom experience was putting us well past closing time. The next message I received from my partner said, "[my name], they're closing." However, this was not what they chose to scold me about when I finally emerged from the bathroom.
Immediately when I walked back to the table, the owner came at me, saying something like "I know you gave me a $5 and I gave you change for a twenty." I looked at my partner. I don't exactly remember all the reasoning for the owner's certainty, but she claimed that if she added up all the money in her drawer, she knew she would come up $15 short. She said that the money that I'd given her was folded and wrinkled, not like the money that comes directly out of the atm (remember my earlier mistake forgetting that my partner added a twenty?). There was an old man sitting about seven feet away and the owner pointed to him and said, "He confirmed it. He said he saw the bill you gave me and it was folded and wrinkled. He's a regular here; he wouldn't lie." Note that he did not claim to have seen a number on it, and of course did not get up and start yelling twenty minutes earlier when she had supposedly given me the wrong change. He just happened to be paying incredibly close attention to a mundane transaction between the owner and another customer, and guarded it away within the steel trap of his rotting brain.
She said, "I saw you give her [my partner] a look just now." So now it was not just a mistake, but we were in cahoots, and it was all planned. This plan she was accusing us of was one that was so fragile that it could have been foiled by her simply looking at the bill I had handed her before she went into her little room and put it god-knows-where. Then she decided to be the "better" person, saying "You know what, this is all my fault... for allowing you all in here in the first place."
My partner said, "Let's go," and we started heading toward the door. We left the full tip as it was on the table.
Finally, for the cherry on top, she said, threateningly, "And guess what, that's a state trooper parked out there." This was as I was struggling with the deadbolt to get out of there. As we were leaving I called her a "weirdo". We jumped in the car and I implored our 5-year-old to hurry up and buckle herself in. My partner joked that me calling her a name was the meanest and most assertive she'd ever seen me.
This was not the only bizarre thing to happen to us that weekend, but it's the only one that's relevant to a review of this restaurant... read more
