My friend TJ and his sidekick the Dooze invited me to a dinner. How spiffy. It was a new restaurant that opened up down on church street. TJ had spied out an ad in the paper, if you made reservations for four people before their official grand opening, not only would the table receive a free bottle of wine, but everyone at the table would also receive a fifty dollar gift certificate for the next time they ate there. Sounds like a deal to me.
I showed up at TJ's house early and liberally took advantage of his bottle of rum, which I enjoyed even though it bore a name as horrid as 'Mount Gay'. Once my internal meter had switched from 'Work' to 'Happy' we headed down to the restaurant. I recognized the place; I had passed it hundreds of times when I had been to Church Street in the past. Church Street itself alarmed me. With all the construction going on almost everything was closed and dusty. We past some idiot guy who held up a cardboard sign that said 'NEED MONEY FOR BEER AND BLUNTS'. Its funny to see a crusty old bum with that sign in a picture on the internet. Seeing some 20-year-old white guy holding it up made me want to go slap him.
So we wander in and get seated. The restaurant was nice. Not posh, but low key taste. Dark colors, stained glass in the ceiling. Nice. I noticed right away that there seemed to be more workers than patrons. However, after we were seated and the water girl arrived, I realized we were in an idiot nice restaurant.
Now, there are nice restaurants. Small independent restaurants that employ specialized cooks who have escalated food to an art form. I understand the ideal behind a nice restaurant, and I also understand why you pay more for them. However that concept can become bloated into a gaudy parody of itself, and that is when it gets perverted into the 'Idiot Nice' restaurant. A place that is expensive for the sake of being expensive.
Point of example: the 'Water Girl'. Her sole purpose is to fill our water glasses. The water was actually bottled water in a glass bottle proclaiming itself from some exotic European country. I think what the romantic ideal behind this is the sheer distance this water travel to reach our table. Or something. I sipped it. It tasted faintly like water that had come through a garden hose.
On top of the water girl we had the wine guy. I think he was annoyed be the fact that I addressed him as 'wine guy'. From their large listed I picked out a fairly cheap bottle of some Shiraz. Despite the fact the wine was thirty dollars, the cap of the bottle screwed off. For a brief moment I wondered if the wine guy was going to ask me to sniff the screw-off cap. Instead he poured the wine into an oversized goblet. I tasted it. It tasted like wine. The wine guy patiently waited there and I realized he was waiting for either a critique or approval. I said 'Gee, it's not fruity like the wine I usually drink!'. Thankfully this made him leave.
After these two people, we finally communicated with our real waiter. He seemed like a nice guy and I briefly wondered how he had managed to land this job. It's probably a waiters dream job, to do the exact same stuff you would do at a Denny's for probably ten times the pay. I ordered myself some bisque and the surf and turf. Might as well treat myself. After he left I gazed around at the other patrons. A couple tables made me think this was the kind of place a rich idiot would take an expensive hooker to impress her.
Most of our food arrived on square plates. What is it with over priced restaurants and square plates? Anyways I have absolutely nothing bad to say about the food. It was beyond excellent. The lobster was monstrous. It was steamed just right so that it slid right out of its shell into a waiting pot of melted butter. The steak was superb, melting in my mouth with the essence of rubbed on herbs. I could not even finish the steak; I was so full of lobster and wine that I felt close to having an out of body experience. I gripped my belly and moaned delightfully, which for some reason seemed to annoy the wine guy whose job in between pouring wines seemed to be standing around and giving sulky glares. I was starting not to like the wine guy.
My gluttony sated, it was time to leave. I knew my bill was going to be high. I gave a mental shrug and thought to myself 'Eh, I deserve it.' So after our cheerful waiter dropped of my bill, I idly plucked it off the tray and peered at it.
$167.96
I blinked and looked at it again. The numbers had not changed.
$167.96.
That was for one person, me: Just my meal. Not including the tip. I peered over at TJ who was not only had the exact same thing I had, but was going to be paying for two meals as well. He had an expression on his face that looked like the lobster he had just ate had reanimated in his stomach and was pinching it's inner lining with a zombi-ish moan. I peered at Alan. He looked like the guy who had just lifted the walnut and did not find the expected pea. I quickly pushed my debit card back in the wallet and pulled out the credit card whose Indian name means 'he who hangs heavily on my shoulders'.
We paid and left. Tj graciously gave me the free bottle of wine and an extra 50 dollar gift certificate. I rather doubt I will use it. I'll hang on to it in case I have a hot date I want to impress or something. However, I rather doubt I'll be going back.
Next up: Ed's drinks devil juice and goes to St. Pete.
http://www.pearlsteakhouse.com/
2026 Update
I set the dial for a free-bottle scheme, and the old devil makes Ed pay $167.96 and meet a haunted lobster.
Ah, 2006, when a restaurant could invent itself out of stained glass and a water girl, and a grown man could pay a hundred and sixty-eight dollars for the privilege of complaining about a cork. I love the innocent architecture of the era: ads in newspapers, reservation by telephone, gift certificates as physical paper, and a friend's rum bottle as a pregame ritual. Now we have reservation apps that nag you, menus on QR codes, and restaurants where the 'concept' is a dozen small plates named after the chef's failed poetry. Bottled water has become tap water with a filter and a story; the wine guy has been replaced by a sommelier tablet. Ed's square plates multiplied into hexagons, then into 'deconstructed' dishes that look like an art installation after an earthquake. The greatest lost species is the 'water girl'—now the server's phone takes a photo of the table first. And the dirtbag with the handwritten sign? He's an influencer with a QR code for his Venmo. Ed's bill would now buy a nice dinner for two, or one appetizer and a parking validation, depending on where you haunt.
“2006 Ed, you slammed a bottle of Mount Gay before dinner and then complained about a water girl—what exactly were you hoping to find beneath that stained-glass ceiling? And did the $167.96 feel like the price of enlightenment or just the wine guy's revenge?” — Beelzebubba the Third
2006 Ed: Ahh, Beelzebubba, you hit it right on the head. What was I hoping for beneath that stained-glass ceiling? Honestly, just a decent meal and maybe not getting judged by a guy whose whole job is pouring water. The Mount Gay was because TJ keeps a bottle and I have no willpower—plus rum makes construction dust and idiot signs a little easier to ignore. I wanted a nice dinner, not a seminar in how rich people pretend water has a passport. And that $167.96? That wasn't enlightenment, that was tuition for the School of Idiot Nice. The wine guy probably got a bonus from my misery. I survived it, though. Now I've got a gift card I'll probably use to buy someone a drink, if I ever have a hot date. Otherwise, that's money I could've spent on boat paint, but no. Go figure.
