In my recent, previous blog about Oprah , I left out the following–although I cannot stop snickering about the whole thing.
It wasn’t as funny when it happened.
Oprah’s security team had ordered dinner, at a separate table in the private room reserved by one of them under her own name (as they each continued earlier to fib that the “VIP room” was not actually being booked for Oprah).
A grilled ribeye special, a chicken Caesar salad, a grilled sandwich and some Buffalo tenders, but, substitute bbq sauce.
Meanwhile, at Oprah’s table (I was told just today) our cool-ass waiter actually attempted to break the whole celebrity-in-the-room ice by looking at mega-star Oprah and saying: “Hello, I’m Matthew and I’ll be taking care of you tonight. And what’s your name?” LOVE that!
He proceeded to take their order too: (3) tortiilla soups, a calamari and our blackened shrimp appetizer.
Ten minutes after the order went to the kitchen, I left my faux security-to-security post to check on what was a pretty easy order, for a very lovely and kind woman and her equally gracious, fibby entourage. 🙂
Easy breezy every day stuff. This is what we do. And yet, for the next 5-10 minutes, I swore at one point that the cooks were playing a trick on me, while imitating a Saturday morning cartoon! It started because one cook had innocently and apparently accidentally turned off his heating steam table to start cleaning after the show rush (way too early!!), and unaware that a likely, big business rush would follow the show, and surely he wasn’t told that Oprah herself was coming. We discovered this significant detail when two tepid black bean soups were returned to the kitchen.
Then, no one could find the tortilla strips that had been topping the soup special all night long, prompting the Chef to yell angrily: “Guys, this is freakin’ embarrassing!” THEN, the buffalo tenders got the muscle-memory not-paying-enough-attention Buffalo sauce, rather than the specially requested BBQ sauce and new ones had to be “fired”, THEN, two cooks disagreed as to which bbq sauce should be used on the new, “dragging” fried chicken, THEN, prompting the maybe slightly stressed owner (waiting for his big photo op) to yell angrily: “Just use ANY freakin’ BBQ sauce holy shit Larry Curly Moe what the fuck is going on in here?!” And, THEN… it was like an electrical short occurred on our line as (in my revisionist memory) the cooks all started bouncing off of each other like electrons and spinning in circles and running back and forth tripping over cold soup, new tortilla strips, re cooked chicken and where-the-holy-be-Jesus is the damn BBQ sauce!!
In my memory, I then calmly smoothed my dress, lifted my chin and re composed like impassioned Shirley Mclaine in the hospital scene of Terms of Endearment, and strolled calmly into the dining room to check on our special visitors.
Per usual, the diners provide a relaxed and stark contrast to the oft-amped environment of the kitchen. Oprah’s people received freshly crisped tortilla strips and all was well.
(I wonder if they will be leaving us a 5-Star Trip Advisor review!?)
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