Just your regular Monday night at Chuy's

For some time we have followed a blog called WaiterRant. In it, an anonymous waiter describes in rather irreverent, often profane ways what it is like to wait on tables for a living. It is not a job for the weak-of-heart or arch. He's turned his blog into a book that is just now hitting the stores and in it one of the ways he says you can tell you are eating in a bad restaurant is by the wait staff turnover. Well, Chuy's remains one of our favorite restaurants but the turnover is very noticeable; for years it was always the same staff, then something happened and nearly every trip now we see an entirely new staff.

Tonight, we were explaining our choices to the (new) waitress and she admitted that she was new and that her customers knew the menu better than she did. She reinforced her newness when she was serving our food and her unbalanced tray hit the floor with Mom's Chuychanga and my side of refried beans. The whole restaurant goes dead silent, and another waiter says, "You want that to go?"

They try to get everything cleaned up, but the the place is just getting busy and a whole lot of people are slipping and sliding on the greasy spot next to our table. I thought I was going to get my newly-reordered side of refried beans in my lap there for a minute. Then another waitress a couple of tables down dumps the drink orders on the floor. Now in all fairness, none of this was as bad as the night we saw a loaded tray get dumped on the customers in one of the booths, but it was messy, nevertheless.

It calmed down, we got the rest of our food, it was good as always, but I had to get our waitress to take one of the Chuychangas off the bill - I told her I was a nice guy, but I wasn't going to pay for the one she dumped.

Maybe Waiter has a point about turnover. But it will take a lot of dumped trays to keep me away.