It's only shaped like a pork chop.
We ran out of ground sirloin today.
We’re down to our last aged New York strip steak. If we can agree on how to cook it, we will cut it into thirds and eat it for dinner tonight, accompanied with a non-vintage pinot grigio or prosecco because there is no red wine.
We are not starving. Yet. We still have a freezer full of frozen mahi-mahi and scallops. The pantry shelves store, among other things, three and a half 50-lb bags of long grain rice and one-gallon cans of concentrated chicken broth, dried mushrooms and saffron. In theory, enough fill two standard sized bathtubs with rice pilaf. But Smuggler’s Inn is not a vegetarian restaurant and we who labor under its slanted awnings crave flesh. And flesh there is none.
Hi. It’s me, your normally upbeat voice of
Smugglers’ Inn, America’s favorite ad agency/theme dining experience. We’ve been hanging out at shuttered location in Coon Rapids, Minnesota for, oh, 93 days now and I’m afraid we’re getting a bit daft. ARRRRR-rrrr! Sorry, pirate talking. Can’t help it.
“We” would be myself, Juan and Juan’s nephew, Juan Junior. Or, Cap’n, First Mate, Mr. Sunny Acapulco and Cabin Boy. You may know the two Juans from previous blog entries devoted to the activities of Smugglers’ Inn, the restaurant.
While Sunny’s —- sorry, Juan Senior’s English is -- ARRR, Matey!-- excellent, he has zero desire to learn the marketing side of our business. Which is fine, because Juan is a quality cook.
Cabin Boy -- I mean Juan Junior, would probably not be on Smug’s payroll had our day manager, Carol, not consented to let the handsome 18-year-old handle landscaping duties on the patch of turf and bushes that makes Smugglers’ Inn an island of green in the parking lot of the Northtown Shopping Center—sorry, the Northtown Shopping Experience.
Juan, Sr. keeps trying to move his nephew – Arrr! Avast ye landlubber! – into the dishwasher-slash-salad prep position, but Junior has proven himself a total klutz who breaks as many plates as he cleans. I’m kind of surprised he hasn’t lost a finger to our lawn mower yet.
Not that there is any landscaping happening now. Smugglers’ Inn, along with every bar and restaurant that doesn’t have outdoor seating---Arrrr! Scurvy dog! Has been shut down.
Did we try and do a curbside business? No. Believe it or not, people come to Smugglers’ Inn for the atmosphere. Also, everything on the menu with the exception of beer cheese soup needs to be served within a five-minute window of when it was prepared. The lobster tail on your plate may be room temperature when you finish it, but if it isn’t steaming when it arrives at your table, you’re going to send it back and you’re going to cross our restaurant off your “approved” list.
So, we’re hiding out. Playing pirate-go-seek amongst the artificial palms and nautical décor and ARRRRRRRRRR! Going crazy.
Avast! Shew yerselves, ye unholy spawn of Neptune and a slow-moving manatee! Step out o’yer hidey-holes by me eight count, or I will skewer yer giblets on the point-o-me cutlass sure as my name’s Cap’n Crunch McNuggets, scourge ‘o the seven seas! And Lake Minnetonka.
Where was I?
Yes, the pandemic. We’ll get through it. When I had to end payroll, I let Juan and Juan Junior, who are as legal as depleted uranium whaling harpoons, park the small RV they had been living out of in front of our dumpsters that aren’t getting emptied anymore and move into the restaurant. With me. Carol had several standing job offers, (EVERYONE likes Carol), but I am hopeful she’ll be back along with the rest of our core employees when life gets back to normal
Life WILL get back to normal.
In the meantime, there is no sense in letting all this perishable food go to waste. To say nothing of four tapped kegs of beer. Arrrrr!
