Hellacious

Saturday Surprises

• Posted by rethwyll on November 7th, 2006 filed in Life In General

So Kevin and I went out to dinner on Saturday evening (eventually), and we were once again reminded that, even in a town as small as Appleton, one can still be surprised by what one finds.

We are really not the type of people who PLAN to go out to dinner, normally; it just happens that way. Normally, one of us is suddenly famished and we haven’t done any planning that night as to how nourishment will magically find its way into our bodies. At that point, we do a little vaudeville routine. Either of us may begin, but it always goes like this:

“Any idea what you want for dinner?”
“Not really. You?”
“No.”

30 minute intermission.

“What do you want for dinner?”
“FOOD.”
“What kind of food?”
“GOOD FOOD.”
“I don’t think we have any of that.”
“Guess we’d better go out, then.”

Life is sometimes a bit circuitious when you’re a household of extraordinarily passive people.

So, vaudeville routine finished, we went to the new Lowe’s Hardware Superstore (the first in our area — hooray for progress!) and then off to find some dinner. Kevin’s first thought was to visit the site of our dearly beloved Peggy’s Bistro (now long closed) and see what had taken its place. Fair enough. We pulled up in front to find that it is now a Mediterranean tapas bar. Awesome. We also found that it was closed. Not so awesome. Appleton on a weekend has tricky hours — you have to guess when things might be opening. Could be 4pm. Could be 5:30pm. Could be 6pm. It’s like a fun-filled lottery!

So, practically shriveling up and dying, we hied ourselves off to our next choice: a new “Latin Fine Dining” restaurant further downtown. I’m assuming “Latin” = “Latin American”, but you never know. And I will never know, because they were also closed. Actually, it looked as though they were not too far off from opening, because we could see the chefs briefing the waitstaff on the evening’s specials. Unfortunately: shriveling. Dying. Unable to wait.

We trekked next door to what we discovered was a Cajun restaurant. This took us by surprise, as the last time we had been to the place with friends, it had been a German restaurant. Kevin likes Cajun, and I figured I could at least find something edible, so we decided to go for it. We walked in, and the entire bar turned around to look at us. Except for the people AT the bar, the place was totally empty. And dimly lit. I was half expecting to see La Cosa Nostra huddled around a table in the back corner. Then we discovered that it was STILL a German restaurant. Sort of. The hostess asked us what kind of food we wanted. “Ve haf Cherman or Cayjun,” she said in an unidentifiable accent. (I voted Eastern European of some sort. Perhaps it was the Russian Mafia in the corner.) We stayed the course and went for the Cajun. We slunk over to a table by the window. (At least our backs were to the wall.)

I quickly narrowed down my edible options to crabcakes or something called Tuna with Strawberry Sauce (pan-seared, no blackening, thank you), which sounded weird but delightful. Kevin went for Blackened Catfish. I made my way past the mafia to the back hallway where they had hidden the salad bar, which featured lettuce, cucumbers, and tomatoes. Oh, and croutons. Exciting. In the meantime, our Bulgarian(?) waitress had brought us something she was calling Cayjun Breat, which turned out to be tiny little pieces of fried bready delicousness WITH A CHEESE DIPPING SAUCE. These people obviously knew I was coming. I think all the crack they sprinkled on the bread got to Kevin, because he ate most of it. Then the real food came. Unfortunately, Kevin’s plate looked as though it had been vomited on, as they unfortunately were translating “blackened” as “blackened plus a big ladelful of chunky tomato-based sludge”. Eesh. The little bit I tried put me right back off Cajun for ANOTHER, oh, 30 years.

My tuna, on the other hand, was AMAZING. Perfectly pan-seared, brilliantly medium rare on the inside, with a delicate strawberry butter sauce that wasn’t overpowering, but was sweet and light and wonderful. It was all I could do to restrain myself from laughing, Nelson-Muntz-like, at Kevin. (OK, maybe I did ONCE. But I definitely didn’t point. Much.) He actually had some of mine to cleanse his palate of HIS dinner. (Not that he didn’t eat 80% of it anyway.)

Thus satiated and pleasantly, PLEASANTLY surprised, we bid adieu to our Romanian(?) waitress, the mob guys, and walked out into the Wisconsin night, amazed that, after living here for 8 years, this town still had some surprises left for us.