Tag Archives: restaurants

Dining Out Can Be Stressful

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We try to enjoy a dinner out but are foiled by bad service.

My friends John and Lorna, who spend their summers in Maine and winters in Arizona, were extremely helpful today. So helpful, in fact, that I wanted to buy them dinner.

We decided to go to a local restaurant called Sangini’s. I happen to be very fond of Sangini’s pizza. They make a thick crust pizza and the crust is good. Other pizza places in town make thin crust pizza. That’s fine, if you like thin crust. I don’t.

John and Lorna like Sangini’s Hawaiian pizza. For those of you unfamiliar with this culinary delight, it’s pizza with ham and pineapple on it. Yes, I did say pineapple. I haven’t tried it yet. I’m afraid to. Where I’m from, the words pineapple and pizza are never used in the same sentence, let alone put together on a menu or in your mouth. Hawaiian pizza is a west coast thing.

Anyway, we all met in Sangini’s at 6 pm. The main dining room had a few people in it and, as we waited to eat, it filled up. Business was pretty good for a Wednesday night.

I examined the menu. I usually eat pizza or perhaps a calzone. But I decided to try something different. I wanted to think of Sangini’s as something other than a pizza place. The only way I could do that was to order something other than pizza — and like it. I decided on the chicken scaloppine.

Trouble started when Mike, my significant other, asked for vinegar and oil on his salad. The waitress, who was probably about 19 years old, looked at him as if she hadn’t heard him correctly.

“What did you want on your salad?” she asked.

“Vinegar and oil.”

“I don’t think we have that,” she said.

“I’m sure you do,” Mike replied.

She went away looking doubtful.

The whole thing reminded me about a breakfast we’d had in a small town restaurant one day. Mike says the restaurant was in Wickenburg, but I don’t remember it that way. Anyway, blueberry pancakes were on the menu. Mike asked the waitress, who was probably still in high school, how they were. “Very good,” she replied. “The blueberries are fresh. We just opened the can today.”

(To those of you who don’t get it, fresh blueberries don’t come in a can.)

Oddly enough, I had just told that story to John and Lorna earlier in the day. I repeated the punchline: “The blueberries are fresh. We just opened the can today.” Then our conversation turned to young people who grew up in Wickenburg and had no idea of anything other than what they saw in town. And how limited that was. And then about young people in general. We were sounding like a bunch of old folks, which is very discouraging when you’re still well under 55.

The waitress came back. “We have balsamic vinegar,” she reported.

“That’s fine,” Mike replied.

When she returned with the salads, mine came with bleu cheese dressing, as requested. Mike’s came with a little plastic container filled with what looked like balsamic vinegar. There was no oil. But before he could ask, the waitress disappeared. She then somehow imagined to avoid making eye contact for the next five minutes. Finally, Mike got up and went to the kitchen. He came back a moment later to tell us how crazy he was. He’d asked for olive oil to go with his vinegar and they’d told him they didn’t have any.

Now this pissed me off. I’d read the menu and I distinctly remember reading a description that included olive oil. Virgin olive oil, if I remember correctly. So either they were lying about not having any olive oil or the menu was misrepresenting one of the dishes.

Mike poked at his salad, but didn’t eat much of it.

Then came the very long wait. I’d say that we waited for at least 45 minutes from the time we placed our order until the time the food finally appeared. Meanwhile, the restaurant filled up and just about everyone else was fed. Some people who came in after us got their checks. We couldn’t decide whether we’d been blacklisted because Mike had asked for vinegar and oil or whether ordering something other than pizza was a mistake.

The food came. It was interesting. Although mine was good and it met the description of what I’d ordered, it wasn’t what I expected. Still, it was good. And although the plate was cold, the food was hot. So I was happy.

Mike’s on the other hand, was nothing like any of us expected. He’d ordered sole parmesan. What came was some fried fish filets with the same lemon sauce that was on my dish, along with some grated parmesan cheese. Parmesan — at least the parmesan I know from being half Italian and from New York — means the meat or fish is covered with a tomato-based sauce, melted mozzarella cheese, and a sprinkle of parmesan. Still, it must have tasted okay because he ate it all.

John and Lorna had Hawaiian pizza. They were happy.

We waited a long time to get the check. And then, once we had the check, the waitress neglected to come by to take my credit card. Finally, Mike, John, and Lorna got tired of waiting. They left and I went to the cash register to pay.

I looked for the owner in the bar on my way out. The place was surprisingly full of young people. In fact, I think everyone in town between the ages of 21 and 28 were in that bar. There may have been some imports, too. I didn’t even know we had that many young people in town. But the owner wasn’t among them.

It’s hard to get good help in Wickenburg. The labor force simply isn’t very good. Mature, was the way someone I know put it. The young people have no work ethic, no experience, and a poor attitude. The older people don’t really need the job so they’re not reliable. Employee problems are what drove me out of the airport fuel business back in April. Employee problems have hurt quite a few local businesses. They certainly didn’t help Sangini’s today.

The way I see it, dinner out is made up of four components: atmosphere, service, food quality, and value for your money. Once you’ve lowered your standards enough to deal with the limited choices in a small town, you don’t mind going out to eat in a place that’s only going to score high on three of these four components. But when a place scores poorly on two or three components, you simply can’t go there anymore.

I’ll still eat Sangini’s pizza. But until the service problem is resolved, I’ll take it to go.

And for the record, Mike and I eat at home more now than we ever did in our lives.

January 4, 2009 Update: This restaurant went out of business at least 6 months ago. A “For Sale” sign is on the building, but no seems interested in reopening it.

Wickenburg is an Island

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Some more thoughts on living at the edge of nowhere.

Last night, we went out to dinner at House Berlin with our friends, the Wurths.

House Berlin is one of my favorite places to eat in Wickenburg. The food is always good and lately the service is good again, too.

The Wurths are a semi-retired couple who moved into Wickenburg not long after we did seven or eight years ago. Jim had been an airline pilot for Eastern Airlines and took early retirement before Eastern went bust. Judith had been a flight attendant back in the days when they were still called stewardesses and had done a few other things I didn’t know much about. Now they live in Wickenburg where they manufacture and sell battery-based aircraft starting devices called StartPacs.

Jim flies a helicopter now and that’s how I know him. He has a 1969 Hughes 500c, exquisitely refurbished and painted. As he likes to say, it’s the Porsche of helicopters. He gave me a ride up the Hassayampa River once that was quite memorable, primarily because of the positive and negative Gs he pulled. In a helicopter. My little Robinson R22, which I owned at the time, couldn’t fly like that. But then again, it didn’t cost $500/hour to fly, either.

Anyway, we went out to dinner and had a nice meal. Jim and Judith had just gotten back from a trade show in Reno, NV, where they’d sold a lot of StartPacs to agricultural operators — companies that do crop dusting, etc. They had lots of stories to tell about the aircraft they’d seen and the stories they’d heard. Judith had caught a cold from Jim and was quieter than usual, looking more tired than I did. (I’d spent the day with Mike and some other friends cleaning up my rental house.)

I’d driven my Honda S2000 to the restaurant and parked out front with the top down. It had been an extremely warm day, with temperatures reaching the 80s in the late afternoon, so it had been nice to get out in the convertible. I rarely drive the car; I’ve had it since August 2003 and it has just over 7000 miles on it now. The car is an eye-catcher in Wickenburg, which probably has more pickup trucks per capita (among year-round residents, of course) than any other town in Arizona. At least that’s how it seems. When I go out with the car, I like to park it in an obvious place, top down, to draw attention to the business I’m visiting. It’s my way of saying, “Hey, this is a cool place. Come on in and check it out.”

[A side story here. Earlier this year, members of the helicopter owners group I belong to descended (literally) on the Wayside Inn, just southeast of Alamo Lake. Five helicopters and a Citabria airplane landed at the restaurant and went in for lunch. (The Citabria landed on the dirt road that runs past the place.) The Wayside Inn is in the middle of nowhere (not even close to the edge) and doesn’t get much business. (Location, location, location.) But with five helicopters and an airplane outside, it seemed that everyone who drove by stopped and came in to eat. Every single table was full. Frankly, I think they should feed us for free when we come in, just to drum up business.]

I left the top down on the car for the drive home. It was only 7 PM, but it was dark and very cool. The desert is like that in the winter. Imagine that the sun is a big heat lamp shining down on the desert. The angle of the sun in the winter is low, so it never really gets very hot. But when the sun goes down and that heat lamp is gone, the air cools very quickly. It’s not unusual to lose 20°F in an hour. But I had the windows rolled up and the heater on in the car, so we were quite cosy.

The moonless sky was full of stars. It was a beautiful night, despite the cold, and although I was tired, I didn’t feel like going home. I felt like going for a drive.

I thought back to the days I lived in New Jersey, not far from Manhattan. Sometimes, on the spur of the moment, we’d drive into the city for a few hours, riding down the streets, dodging the yellow taxis, listening to the sound of the car horns bounce off the tall buildings on the side of the road. We’d drive down Broadway through Times Square, past Herald Square and Washington Square. We’d see the punkers and cross-dressers and plain old college kids in Greenwich Village and sometimes, if we got a parking spot, would hop out and take a walk around. Other times, we’d head down to Chinatown or Little Italy for Chinese food or some Italian pastries at Ferrarra’s. (I remember a few years ago taking a $14 round trip cab ride from midtown to Little Italy, just to pick up a box of pastries — they’re that good.) We’d drive down past the Municipal Building, where I worked for several years, and City Hall. Then we’d drive up the east side on the FDR drive, past the Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Williamsburg Bridges. The lights of the city’s skyscrapers would be to our left as we headed north while the darkness of the East River was to our right. Past the Queensboro Bridge (immortalized by it’s other name in the Simon and Garfunkel song) and the tramway to Roosevelt Island. Onto the Harlem River Drive, past Yankee Stadium, and up the ramp to the Cross Bronx Expressway. Then a short drive over the George Washington Bridge and into the darkness of the Palisades Parkway to the north. A while later, we’d be home again, full of memories, Chinese food, or pastries — more likely a combination of these. Although we lived on a quiet, tree-lined street in a town so small that few people knew of its existence — Harrington Park — we were only 26 miles from midtown Manhattan. Two hours was often enough time to have a brief evening out in the big city.

Last night, in Wickenburg, reminded me of an early or late summer night in New Jersey. The weather was about the same. But that’s where the similarities end.

Wickenburg, you see, is an island surrounded by desert. When you drive away from Wickenburg at night, you drive into darkness. Eventually, that darkness is replaced with another town or more. Go southeast and you’ll pass through Morristown, Circle City, and Wittman, none of which are very impressive day or night before you finally get to Surprise, which is growing rapidly, spreading northward at an alarming rate. That’s where you’ll find the bright lights of the strip malls and big box stores and parking lots. Go west and you’ll eventually pass through Aquila, Wenden, Salome, Hope, and Brenda before finally hitting I-10. These tiny communities make Wickenburg seem like a thriving metropolis. Go north and you’ll pass through Congress, Yarnell, and Peeples Valley on your way to distance Prescott, which is a thriving metropolis.

And Phoenix, to the southeast, is not only distant, but it’s a poor substitute for New York.

So I guess it’s safe to say that Wickenburg just isn’t a good starting point to take an evening drive. It’s an island that is surrounded by distance rather than water.

All this passed through my mind in the distance between Double D and Safeway on West Wickenburg Way. So we just went home.

If anyone knows of a place to get good Italian pastries — and I mean real Italian pastries — in the Phoenix area, please let me know. It might be worth a drive just to check it out.

The Kofa Cafe is Gone

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One of my favorite fly-in destinations changes ownership and goes down the tubes.

The Kofa Cafe is gone. And I’m very unhappy about it.

The Kofa Cafe was one of my favorite fly-in meal destinations. About 50 nautical miles southwest of Wickenburg (bearing 240° as per my GPS), it was a great place to fly for a burger, some good chicken fried steak, or an ice cream sundae. I’d land in the back, among the creosote bushes and pencil cholla, off the dirt road so I wouldn’t kick up so much dust with my rotor wash. I’d shut down and walk in. Because no windows looked out at the back, no one knew I’d arrived by helicopter. I’d have my meal, visit the ladies room, pay, and leave.

Kofa CafeI wrote about my first landing at the Kofa Cafe in an article for wickenburg-az.com’s Day Trips section. I liked the restaurant’s big servings and down-to-earth atmosphere. I liked all the junk out on the front porch and in the yard. I liked eating with the truckers. I liked taking the helicopter someplace that wasn’t on an airport but didn’t get me in trouble. Three-Niner-Lima parked in the truck parking area the first time I visited the Kofa Cafe. The Cafe is the blue building.

The Kofa Cafe was for sale for years. No one wanted to buy it. Finally, the owners just packed up everything on the porch, locked the doors, and left. That was last spring. I’d arranged a helicopter outing there with our Heli Group and I found out the day before that the place had closed down. (We wound up going to Prescott instead. Not the same.)

But a few weeks ago, Mike and I had flown over in Mike’s plane. When I looked down, I saw cars in the parking lot. Perhaps the owners had come back. Perhaps they’d opened for the season. Today, I decided to fly out and find out.

Well, the old owners didn’t come back. Instead, there’s a new owner. He was there and he’s a certifiable jerk. He spent all of his time talking loudly to another customer, telling them how he runs the place so much cheaper than the last one. He complained about my waitress putting too much whipped creme (not cream) on my sundae — “I lose $2 every time she makes one of those.” He demanded to know why he was paying for iceberg lettuce and bagged salad. He claimed his property was worth “three quarters of a million dollars” and that’s why he lived in a motorhome there.

The guy was obnoxious, the place was sad. It had been open 24 hours a day. Now it’s open 12 hours a day, only 6 days a week. Half the menu items are gone. There are only three flavors of ice cream. The pies aren’t’ even made on the premises anymore. And I won’t even go into detail about the Alzheimer’s lady they leave sitting at a table by herself so they can keep an eye on her.

The waitress was unhappy. Frankly, I would quit rather than put up with her boss’s obnoxious behavior.

Needless to say, I won’t be back unless it gets a new owner again.

The Kofa Cafe is indeed gone — don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.