Meatmarket revisited

C’mon, you know I don’t like ranting about restaurants. These are real people, your and my friends, maybe even relatives, doing jobs just like if they were pushing stocks or whatever. This is their life, at least for the moment. They don’t deserve to be trashed by unkind words just because they’re in the “service industry”. Don’t EVEN GET ME FUCKING started.

I’ve never been in the so-called “service industry” but I have known so, so many people who have been there, in there, with there, entirely with their lives dominated by there, that I can no longer differentiate them by “Us” and “Them.” Face it. They ARE us! We are they.

So no, I will never trash a restaurant. Not that I even have the credentials to trash anything, but the thing to pay attention to is that these people, even me and you, be they house painters, janitors, cooks, busboys, what have you, they KEEP THE MACHINE RUNNING.

Fucking George Bush, Stephen Harper, Ehud Olmert, Bashir Assad, K’n Yu Die Young, they PRETEND to keep the machine running. But in reality it’s Nikki at Cosmos who truly keeps things running.

So tonight’s dinner at Meatmarket was a disaster, but I don’t want to rant about it. I don’t want to rant about the fact that the place was almost empty and there were at least five servers standing around and chatting. I don’t want to rant that the music, an incredibly invasive ”House”-type noise, was way, way over the top, that I had to shout at the waitress and she had to shout back, even though exactly three covers were filled in the entire place, that the service was incredibly lax, and you JUST KNOW how much I hate to have to yell “Garçon/Babe/schweetheart/hey/excuse me, can we get some service after your chat with your server pal while there are THREE PATRONS in this whole fucking place?” Do you just know how much I hate to have to do that?

Thank god that Billy, Schmo, Ingrid and Abigail had their shit together in the kitchen. (Just kidding, I don't have any idea who they were). The burgers were beyond delightful, the fare absolutely as good as I remember it. But Christ.

A bad review in these days of Zagat and Chowhound and “OMG it was aweful” can sink or float a place, and I sure as hell don’t want to do that. But these people, whoever they are, should get their shit together, because their food clicks. Just get away from the St. Laurent theme and you’ll survive for years.

Sorry, don’t know if this was a restaurant review or a rant but here it is anyway.

Food: Excellent, best in its class
Service: Tim Horton’s