The Blue Lemon

On Friday H. and I went on a date night with Matt and Julie. As Matt and I were emailing back and forth, trying to decide what to do for date night, Matt suggested we eat at The Blue Lemon. He had heard of the restaurant through a coworker. I found the website and looked around a bit and decided it sounded fantastic. I was totally up for something new. Do you ever feel like that? Like you just cannot go to Cafe Rio one more time, even though you love it? I was in that kind of a mood. Matt suggested we check with the spouses to make sure they were ok with the food shift. Matt got everything cleared with Julie and I emailed H. with a weblink. He emailed back and said he was a-ok with the new place.

As we were driving to M&J's place I said, "I'm surprised you were ok with a new place, especially since the website said they were 'healthy.'"

H: What?

Me: Well, it said they were "healthy without sacrificing flavor."

H: Oh no! Do we have to go there?

Me: Dude, we already agreed. Didn't you read the website?

H: No response, other than the guttural noises.

So we drive on up there with H. complaining all the way. We get inside and the place is new and clean and has a real sharp new-agey kind of feel to it. Plus, who doesn't like a place called the Blue Lemon. The name alone makes me happy. I dig lemons (if you haven't been reading this blog for very long). So The Blue Lemon is intriguing.

The restaurant is set up so that you grab a menu, walk through a line, order, get a number and then grab a table.

H. takes one look at the menu and starts to grumble all over again. He wants to leave.

Me (very angrily): We are NOT leaving. I am hungry and you agreed to come here!

H: Walks up to the cash register, starts questioning what they mean by "vegetable medley" inside of the chicken alfredo and proceeds to order the alfredo.

We get our drinks, sit down, and this is what I hear from Harold....complete and utter silence for the next 10 minutes.

I apologize, I say I shouldn't have made him eat here. I know he looks forward to date night and eating something yummy...etc, etc.

More silence, then the martyr thing starts up.

H: It's fine, don't worry about it....

(Interesting note: Their plastic cups are made from corn and are 100% compostable, I thought that was pretty cool! The funny thing was, we were waiting for our cups to disintegrate. I mean, how many licks does it take to make a hole in my corn cup?)

The food comes.

Harold's is cold on the outside and lukewarm in the middle. Mine wasn't exactly warm either but it really did taste super yummy. As did Matt's and Julie's. The three of us were really enjoying our meals while we hear drop-dead silence from the fourth member of our party.

We had finished our meal when the guy in charge, Chef Ramsay (as Julie was calling him because he was yelling at his crew in the kitchen), comes to take our plates away and asks how we like it. I explain that my sweet potato fries were really limp and not warm at all, but that they tasted good. He explains that they do not deep fry their "fries" and they are working on the food heating issue and scampers away, after saying several times the phrase, "rock and roll!" I could have done without his superiority complex/attitude. Dude, you have a new restaurant here, why aren't you trying to make this right? I don't need free stuff, just a small apology and a sincere request to have me return again would have sufficed.

Guess who will never eat there again? Definitely H. But maybe Julie and I could take a swing by another time? I think we should have a cup licking contest.

As a side note: The bistro was separated into two parts with only a small partition dividing the restaurant portion with the cafe portion. The cafe portion serves dessert. When we tried to order dessert with our dinner we were told that would be impossible. We would have to order dinner, sit and eat, then go to the other side of the place to order dessert, find another table in a new, different section and eat. What the?