Chicken Fingers

There was this great little Italian restaurant right around the corner from our house, that was a favorite of ours.  An Italian family from Naples ran the place.  Really good, authentic Italian cuisine for an affordable price, a BYO to boot.  Great place to take the kids.

However.  You had to know there was a however coming, right?

Most of the waitresses, who were sisters and/or cousins, somehow all related, were mean.  They really didn’t enjoy their jobs it seemed, and really seemed to not like their customers at all.  They were akin to the Soup Nazi, for any Seinfeld fans.  Don’t mess with them in any way or they will give you the malocchio (maloik).

Every time we would go we’d hope to get one of the nice waitresses.  The four of us would eye up the situation once we were seated and try to ascertain if we would end up with one of the nice ones.

On one particular occasion, we ended up with the meanest one of all of them.  We placed our drink order and perused the menu and accepted our fate.

As per usual, our 16 year old daughter at the time, wanted to order the chicken fingers.  She was 16 but still had the palate of a 6 year old, despite our best efforts to broaden her culinary horizons. 

The chicken fingers were on the children’s menu (under 12 years old).

Now, this had never been a problem before. 

But super mean waitress was clearly in a worse mood than usual.

We placed our order.

She said, “She’s too old for the chicken fingers. She can’t have chicken fingers.” (insert Soup Nazi, “no soup for you!” reference here).

I replied, “But she always gets the chicken fingers and it’s never been a problem before.”

We should have known better.  You don’t argue with the Soup Nazi.

She said, “Doesn’t matter.  No chicken fingers for her.”

I then said, “Well.  Ok.  How about you give her the chicken fingers but charge us more money? We’ll pay whatever the ‘adult’ price for 4 chicken fingers would be.”

Mean waitress stared at me as if possessed by the devil, nostrils flaring, fire coming out of her eyes, hand on her hip, leaned in and spat at me, “No chicken fingers for her.”

Well.  I am not easily intimidated and can out-Italian her Italian (though she clearly has the advantage as she was Italian and I am only second generation Italian-American).  I stared her down and said, “How about you check with the owners?” 

She glared at me, paused for a beat, rolled her eyes and snapped, “Fine. I will check with the owners.”

I was certain that she was not in fact checking with the owners.  I was certain that she was just pretending to check with them.  Because the owners were generally nice.  I would also suspect that the owners would care less and in fact would care more to know that one of their customers was willing to pay more for their child-sized chicken fingers.

We sipped our drinks.  We looked at each other like, ‘is this really happening?’.

Mean waitress returned.  With a smirk she said, “I asked and the answer is still no.  No chicken fingers for her.  She needs to order something else. I’ll give you a minute to look over the menu again.”  And off she sauntered, ready to torture the next set of customers.

With that, Ernie said, “That’s it. We are out of here. Let’s go.”

We slid out of the booth, and without a backward glance, walked out the door.

Our favorite little Italian restaurant was now off limits.  No way were we ever setting foot in there nor giving them our hard-earned money.  We ended up finding another great little Italian restaurant, but it was a bit further away.  That was a small concession to make.

A couple of years went by and we heard the news.  They sold the restaurant! A new Italian family, also from Naples, bought it.

We were back in business. 

And when we asked if we could order the chicken fingers for Amy, who was even older by that point, the new owner smiled and said, “Of course, not a problem.”

Now that’s how you run a restaurant.  Chicken fingers for whoever wants them.