So we went to Chief O’Neil’s to celebrate my husband’s promotion and my new haircut and color. We live in the neighborhood and eat there fairly often, usually bringing friends. The food isn’t spectacular, but it’s good and we like the atmosphere.
It was a beautiful night so we went to be seated outside in the garden/patio. Our first table was on the paved area but after about ten minutes the hostess lady said we had to move because a party was there. (A party that in the hour and a half we were there never appeared.) OK. We asked for a cute little four top in the corner by the plants where we could see the whole patio. It was delightful until we saw our first rat. Then it was kind of gross, but also kind of funny. Now we are not easily offended and we know how hard it can be to control the rat population. We also know that other people are not as understanding and we thought the staff might want to scare it off before that mystery party appeared. So we flagged one guy down and let him know what was happening. “Oh snap!” was his response. We convinced him to stomp around a bit to shoo it away. He offered to let us move but the other seating options were not far enough away from Ratville to make a difference or else they were in the smoking area or finally, up against the windows of the dining room where a private party of old people were listening to some guitar player. We debated sitting there and just putting our faces up against the glass and looking longingly at the private event but decided to stay where we were.
Now our waitress was slammed in the front section of the bar and we were her only table outside which left us waiting for long periods of time for drinks, bread, food etc. She was nice when she was there but the waits were a bit ridiculous. So we entertained ourselves with naming the rats, Napoleon and Dynamite. Making Ratatouille jokes,. Singing songs where we replaced the real lyric with the word “rat.” “Blinded by the Rat” “Cold Hearted Rat”, Oops I Ratted Again”. When our server appeared again we told her about our urban wildlife and she was totally freaked out. We did it in a subtle way because we didn’t't want to upset the other diners on a rather full night. She offered again for us to move but since the rats were a fair distance away we decided to stay. We saw her notify the manager lady and we expected her to come over and thank us for being cool, or apologize but nothing. Husband and I debated whether or not we would yelp this part of the experience because we weren’t sure if we wanted to “Rat them out”. Ha! There were several other rat jokes like “Rats off to you”, etc.
The food finally arrives and it was good, not great. The Bangers and Mash had a really flavorful onion gravy that we loved. The chips were good but the fish was kind of greasy. Then the rat peeked out at me about a foot away. I screamed. Loud. I didn’t mean to but it was right there. Then we started laughing. “Nothing to see here, folks!”
A table of four sees their first rat and the men casually point while the women pick up their hand bags from the ground and I can hear the one woman keep saying, “that’s a rat, a RAT!” Then they got up and leave for the smoking section.
We waited another round of forever for another item and then a new server comes up and apologizes that our original server was not coming back because it was too busy up front. We ask for our check and I sit back to finish my drink. Then the rat RAN ACROSS MY FOOT! Right. Across. My. Foot. I SCREAMED, yanking my feet up under me. So much for subtlety. My husband leaps up and was like, “that’s it we’re outta here.” I won’t put my feet down until he assures me the furry demon is gone. Now everyone is looking and I didn’t care.
We leave our half finished drinks and race for the door. A guy says, “OK what was it?” and I say, “RATS!” I explain what happened to the servers and the girl looks at me and says, “Oh. I saw a squirrel there earlier.” I am all like, “I know what a rat looks like. You have them all over the patio. Other tables have seen them and moved. You have RATS!” Then my husband paid the check, in full, and we left, , explaining to our earlier server what had happened as we passed.
Now I am sorry, but if a rat runs across a patron’s foot the patron deserves an apology and quite possibly, a free drink. Not to be told that it was a squirrel as you are handed the check. As we left my husband said, “Honey, you have some Yelping to do!”
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