Memoirs Of J

We went to the traveler’s club international restaurant and tuba museum for dinner last night. It was so weird. First because it’s a tuba museum, obviously. Second because of some of the strange people there, and lastly, the food Curtis ate.

The tuba museum part? Well I just don’t get it. Who thought to cram a museum for rusty old tubas together with a restaurant? It gave me something to stare at other than people though, for once, so that was good I suppose. The only rationale I can come up with is that the tubas are supposed to give the place an eclectic, unique vibe, and it definitely does do that. And this may explain the disproportionate level of weirdos in one place.

I’m not saying everyone there was weird, but our waitress was a bit…off. It’s kind of hard to describe, but she reminded me of someone who should have been in that movie Reality Bites, only minus the witty, intelligent character part.

Since the place is so little and it was a Friday night, it filled up very quickly. A few of the tables are 6 seaters and it is a seat-yourself place. So we ended up at one of these 6-tops since the booths were all taken. A waiter came to ask us if we cared if three people sat at our table and we said we didn’t care. We honestly didn’t care, but for the life of me I could not figure out the situation of the people who shared out table. It was this older, white, affluent-looking couple accompanied by a friendly yet, and I’m not saying this to be mean, partially retarded black woman wearing an oversized Saints t-shirt and baseball hat. Julia blabbed at them and everyone else she saw. The Saints woman and the older guy seemed friendly enough but the older woman made quasi-bitchy comments about how we were eating but Julia had no food (she had been well fed before we left, plus I had applesauce in her bag for when she got hungry).

So we’re sitting there waiting for our food with these people, polite but not going out of our way to make conversation. I’m not sure why everyone feels obligated to make small talk when they are confined to an area with other people. Even I do to an extent but I really have to be in the mood or else drunk to actually act on it. We were relieved when our appetizer (fries and queso) arrived.

The queso was very good, nice and spicy, and the fries were thick and crispy potato wedges. The only bad thing about it was that the amount of queso was about 3x as much as needed for the amount of fries provided.

Our dinners came out shortly after we finished the app. I got lemon chicken with steamed vegetables and Curtis got bobotie, an African dish of lamb meatloaf with curry and spices. It came with some lamb kabobs and a shit load of cabbage (yuck), and yams. My dinner was very good, but I thought Curtis’s was gross-looking. He said was good though. He even ate the cabbage.

We finished our meals, fed Julia her applesauce (as well as various pieces of yam, rice, cabbage, pea pod, and anything else that seemed suitable to give her), and tried to keep J from squealing at eardrum-piercing decibels. It took forever for the waitress to bring our bill. We probably waited about 20-25 minutes just for the bill. It wasn’t a huge deal for us as we weren’t in a big hurry or anything, but there was a small crowd waiting for a place to sit so you’d think they would want to get us out of there so new customers could sit down. We decided that next time we go there it will be during the week when it shouldn’t be so crowded.