OK SO NOW WHAT?

Wednesday, January 31, 2007

Don tells me that today, when he passed by our tried and true family restaurant, the Red Robin, it had been closed! Yet it still exists on the Red Robin website. Is it possible that a rival restaurant manager posing as someone from Red Robin Corporate, went and shut down Red Robin, and the people who run the chain don't know about the ruse yet? Oh I hope so.

There are not many places we can take our kids where everyone is really happy. There is a whole swathe of restaurants where WE would be perfectly happy, but the other patrons would beg to differ because they'd be irritated by Becca's ants in her pants and Sarah's whipping her retainer out at the drop of a hat. There is a whole other bunch of places that are family-friendly (aka other kids are also whipping out retainers, so grossness loves company), but the food is atrocious. I don't really believe in fast food, so that's out. And there are still more places that have been Blacklisted By Don for bad service violations of all sorts.

• underattentive wait staff
• overattentive wait staff
• serving Don the wrong kind of hamburger (if it comes with tomatoes, it's inedible)
• making us wait too long for our food (if Becca can run laps around the table more than 3 times, it's too long)
• irritating patrons (I know this is not a service violation, exactly... but sometimes we sit near annoying people and it gets the restaurant blacklisted. Sorry, life is not fair.)

This leaves a very tiny list of restaurants where we can take our kids, not feel as if we are irritating patrons ourselves, all have things we find edible... and Red Robin was definitely up there.

But even beyond being a happy-medium kind of restaurant, Red Robin was good in several ways. First, the neverending basket of fries. We have never actually sat at the restaurant long enough to determine WHEN neverending would be put to a halt by management, but it is a nice sounding benefit. Second, balloons. Even for adults if you want. In a choice of nice colors. Third, it's by Becca's preschool. And Home Goods. And our house. Fourth, not so expensive. Fifth, nice selection of beers on tap.

So if anyone has any suggestions for us that would serve as a handy substitute for this place, please leave me a comment. Meanwhile, we are just going to hope that it's all a cruel, cruel joke.