I'm recovering from the first stomach bug of the season (brought home by Cap Jr., who just started kindergarten), so today I thought I'd try something a little easier on the gut than my usual burger and fries. A coworker tipped me off that Noodles and Company had recently opened a Tuttle location. Pasta and soup seemed like just the ticket for my slowly-recovering GI tract.
The line was out the door at 11:35. It usually takes a while for a new restaurant to build a crowd, especially if that restaurant isn't easily seen from a major thoroughfare. Noodles is hard to see from Blazer Parkway and can't be seen at all from Tuttle, so the crowd had to be based on word of mouth - a good sign.
The wait gave me plenty of time to scan the menu. Noodles offers three broad categories of food (Asian, Mediterranean, and American). Within each category, you can select from four pasta dishes, a soup, and/or a salad. The Asian and Mediterranean categories looked particularly tasty, but I decided to play it safe, stick to the American category and order a small mac 'n' cheese, some chicken noodle soup, and a fountain drink.
And that's when I ran head-on into what MSNBC correspondent Bob Sullivan calls "Gotcha" capitalism. The Noodles menu offers something called a "trio" (any pasta, meat, and soup) for $7.25. The cashier announced my total as $11.86, and I had already handed him a twenty when it occured to me that something was wrong.
"$11.86 for mac and cheese and chicken soup?" I asked.
"Well, you also ordered a drink," said the cashier - a little blond kid who looked very much like Angel Face in Fight Club. You might remember him as the kid whose face is utterly destroyed by Ed Norton when he loses his self-control and his sanity near the end of the film.
"A four-dollar drink? Can't you combo-meal that or something? Make it cheaper?"
"Oh, you wanted a trio? What kind of meat do you want?"
"None. Who orders meat in mac and cheese?"
"Well, if you order the trio, you have to pick a meat."
"So you'll give me a discount if I take some chicken and throw it away?"
It doesn't take much to piss off a Gen-Y'er, and this kid looks like he'd like to kill me. And in some strange way, I'm enjoying this, because it hasn't been the best week for me either. I only wish I could have tormented the marketing wizard who designed Noodles' menu instead of this kid.
A little blonde girl with a "manager" tag overhears the discussion and asks if she can help. And by the vapid look in her eyes, I know she can't help, and it's going to get worse. I explain what I want, and that if I have to take chicken to get the trio deal, I will. So she explains to the kid how to refund my purchase and re-ring it properly, except that she won't listen when he tells her he hasn't yet made my change and there's nothing yet to refund. And they stand there for a full four minutes, staring at a twenty-dollar bill and a register that displays "11.86" and an open cash drawer, and arguing about what to do.
These are the Americans who are losing their jobs to illegal Mexican immigrants. And this is not a bad thing, no matter what Tom Tancredo (R-CO) may tell you.
Eventually, my meal rang up for $8.95, as it should have. I was given a numbered card, and I took a seat. Five minutes later, a girl brought my meal. I carefully inspected it for human spittle or Ex-Lax contamination, then commenced eating.
The chicken soup contained egg noodles, celery, and onions, and would have been very tasty, had it been warm...which it wasn't. I gulped it down first, while it was still a degree or two above room temperature.
The mac and cheese consisted of a large pile of elbow macaroni with a little dollop of cheese sauce in the middle and a sprinkling of shredded cheddar and Monterey Jack cheeses on top. An inch-wide ring of macaroni around the edges contained no sauce or seasoning whatsoever. I ate the seasoned portion, which turned out to be marginally better than Kroger's house brand of mac and cheese but not as good as Kraft, nowhere near as good as KFC's, and not even in the same ballpark with Boston Market or Hoggy's. At least the mac and cheese was marginally warmer than the soup.
There was also a little piece of chicken breast, which I apparently had to take to get my discount. A big issue over a little tissue. I took two bites. It was flavorful, but a little rubbery, like the chicken found in Bob Evans stir-fry. It wasn't bad, if you wanted chicken, which I didn't.
So I left feeling like the idiot who pays $5 to take his kid through the "fun house" at the fair, knowing I'd been ripped off, but helpless to do anything but blog about it. Maybe I'd have had a better meal if I had ordered from the Asian or Mediterranean selections. I'll never know, because I won't go back.
Given the well-decorated dining area and trendy menu, I feel certain Noodles and Company will be a big success. There seems to be no shortage of people in Dublin eager to spend $12 for a second-rate lunch.
No comments:
Post a Comment