A mostly fictional account of visiting a franchise restaurant
It was a confluence of unfortunate circumstances and bad judgement that led me to taking a three year-old to a suburban mall the week after Christmas.
There were things to return, a late gift to pick up, and we were catching an afternoon movie nearby. “It’ll be fun,” I had told my wife stupidly as she departed for a girls’ night. “We’ll kill some time and maybe grab dinner.”
It isn’t much later; errands having been run, movie abandoned at the halfway point, and said late gift — oversized and heavy — slung awkwardly in a ripping paper bag under my arm; that I begin to have my first pangs of doubt.
My back is starting to hurt. The mall crowds are irritating me. And my son, being three, had long stopped listening to rational suggestions.
“Buddy,” I negotiate, “maybe we don’t want to lick the escalator railing, OK?”
I shove his coat under my arm and assure myself we just need to get to a restaurant and get some food — and a drink for me — into our bellies. The food court is a no-go. We’ll never agree on something he and I will both eat and there is no chance I am lining up twice to eat. The mall is also attached to a location of The Keg but it seems like both a waste of money and an unfair thing to foist on people on weekend dates to bring a small child there.
And so to the mid-tier franchise restaurant we go.
I corral my son toward the correct escalator using a piece of candy I had found in my coat earlier that day. “There’s got to be one decent beer on tap,” I tell myself as we approach, like a fucking idiot who has never dined at a mid-tier franchise restaurant in London, Ontario.
An eleven year-old hostess somehow manages to smile and greet us without either smiling or greeting us and we confirm that there are in fact two in our party.
Given our oversized winter coats and the bags I’m lugging, we request a booth and are escorted to a booth that has either been constructed for half-people or is a throwback to those times when humans were much smaller. It is perhaps the smallest “booth” I’ve ever seen. I give up half my seat to our coats and wedge myself in with one butt cheek hanging over the edge. My son opts to climb into his side of the booth face first, placing his eyes, nose, and mouth directly on the fake leather that over the years has played host to a flotilla of hot, mall-sweaty assholes.
I get acclimated and scan for a server as my son instantly begins to squirm in his seat. “Maybe this isn’t such a good idea,” I think to myself as I move the lit candle on our table out of his reach. But quick mental math about getting him to our snow-covered car, driving him home, and then preparing a meal for him convinces me that staying here is the better option. We are in this for the long haul. He accidentally kicks me square in the shin with heavy, wet, salted boots as he tells me again he is hungry and lunges for the salt shaker. I fight through the pain and attempt to start a game of “I Spy” to kill time, but my heart’s not in it and he can tell. The game peters out when we realize most of the things around us are brown.
Mercifully, a server finally comes. Jonas is devastatingly young and friendly to a degree that’s, frankly, verging on hostile. “How we doing tonight fellas?” he says as he lays seven separate menus on our small table, each one larger than the next. To make room for the legal-sized placard detailing their Cream-Based Festive Seafood Specials, he hastily shoves the lit candle back toward my toddler’s face.
I assure him we’re doing great even as I feel the first suggestion of anxiety-induced dampness in my armpits and along my undercarriage.
“Can I get you guys a couple of drinks to get started?” he asks with a smile so broad it splits one of his lips. I’m overcome with a sudden urge to yell, “What the fuck do you think, Jonas?!” but instead I order a chocolate milk for my son and ask what’s on tap as I fumble through the vast menu collections to see which tome holds the secrets of the draught list. He recites a list of shitty Molson brands — Canadian, Coors Light, Michelob Ultra, etc — just as I find the draught list myself and I notice he has failed to mention the “Local Rotating” option.
“What’s this one local option?” I ask.
“Oh that’s a session IPA,” he says.
“What brewery is that from?” I ask.
“I’m actually not too sure,” he says. I wait to see if he’ll refer to a notepad or follow up with, “Let me just check and be right back,” but he does not. He maintains eye contact. His grin widens, bringing blood to the surface of his split lip. Finally he offers, “I actually wouldn’t recommend that, though. It’s a lighter, citrus-y beer and really more for summer.”
I feel the heat rush to my face. My inner-beer snob is screaming.
Cooler heads — and the increasingly-urgent need for a drink, ANY drink — prevail. “I’ll just have a negroni,” I manage, my fingernails deep in the leather of one of the Bellini menus. Jonas assures us he’ll be right back with those drinks and I shuffle through the menus to find one that might show food items and their prices.
My son attempts to climb over the wall of our booth to talk to the older couple dining next to us. They seem uninterested in Moana and I apologize profusely but they assure me it’s fine because they have grandkids and they “totally get it.”
I see the kids menus offers what every kids menu offers: chicken fingers, a pizza, a burger, and pasta with either white or red sauce. Perfect. The classics. If there is one redeeming quality about franchise restaurants (and there literally might just be this one) it’s that the kids menu will almost always offer these four options and one of them is very likely the Only Thing Your Kid Will Eat.
The “adult” menu also reads pretty typical, running the gauntlet from the deep-fried, cheese-saturated, and beige to the gentrified dishes passing as “international.” No, I will pass on the “Let us Shoyu our Ramen” or the “Here we Gyoza again,” thanks.
At this point Jonas returns with my son’s chocolate milk and some bad news. It looks like he might cry as he tells me that there is no sweet vermouth in the restaurant. I too almost start to cry. The mall, I discover, has been more detrimental to my well-being that I had been willing to admit. I really need that drink. My son drinks half his chocolate milk in one gulp as my flop sweat intensifies and I try to come up with a back-up drink plan.
Jonas must see my panic because he tries to steer me back to the draught menu. “I know all our beers are available…” he offers in such a friendly manner I feel like he might stab me.
“Do you know what that local one is, or….?” I ask again, thinking maybe he’s passed by the place they pour drinks since we last saw him.
“I’m sorry, I’m not too familiar with that one,” he says, locking in, his deer-like eyes imploring me for some modicum of empathy. Please, his eyes, say, consider that I must deal with the great mystery of the draught menu every day as a person who works here. For a second, I almost pity him. Poor Jonas. People keep asking him what this one rotating local tap is and he has no way of ever knowing.
“I’ll just get a dry gin martini, up, with an olive,” I tell him.
“Very good,” he says. He offers me an ever wider grin and I can see that blood is now smeared across his front teeth. My son begins aggressively blowing bubbles in what remains of his chocolate milk. I catch a disapproving side-eye from the grandmother at the booth next to us.
At this point I take take Jonas by the wrist and say it again, firmly, urging him with my eyes to write it down. “Dry gin martini. Up. With an olive.” I can tell I’ve frightened him, but it can’t be helped. At this point things are getting serious. I also order my son “red pasta” and I order a Cobb salad because how bad can a Cobb salad be? I also request they remove the onions because raw onions are gross and also it is a Cobb salad, so why would there be fucking onions in it?
As Jonas departs, clearly shaken, I decide to stop being a hero and resort to the secret tool that has been the go-to assistant for parents of small children in restaurants for generations: YouTube. I wrestle the oversized metal pepper grinder from my son, who has been chewing on it like a rabid ocelot, and I use it to prop up my iPhone for him. I prepare to enjoy my martini as wealthy Russian children on the internet unbox toys for my son and teach him the wonders of owning — and presumably quickly discarding — expensive material possessions. There is an audible “harrumph” of disproval from the neighboring table as Vlad and Niki open a new ride-along child-sized Bentley to add to their armada, but I ignore it. I will enjoy my 14 minutes and 37 seconds of solace.
But it’s at this point I realize I can see the draught taps. They are roughly 10 feet away and Jonas need only have turned his head to spot the one “local” option among the half dozen shitty Molson lagers. It’s from a medium-sized brewery roughly 600 kilometers away. I start to feel OK about my martini order as my son laughs at the next video that’s come up in his queue — a kid making slime, some teen defeating a monster in Minecraft, ISIS beheading an infidel, or whatever it is that YoutTube autoplay has determined is the right thing for my son to watch. Who am I to question the algorithm?
But then Jonas returns. Something is clearly wrong because he doesn’t want to make eye contact. He’s smiling so intensely it seems it might create long-term dental problems, but the life is gone from his eyes. He’s like a mako shark caught in a net when he tells me, “We’re just trying to find some olives.”
I turn and see the bartender, a martini glass filled with ice in front of her, poking uselessly through the service bar as a manager behind her searches for keys to some forgotten storage pantry.
“A TWIST IS FINE,” I bark, far too loudly. The grandmother next to us drops her fork and the grandfather raises an eyebrow. Jonas scurries off, laughing crazily. I start to wonder what time it is.
“How long have we been here?” I ask my son, tugging at my shirt collar.
“Forever,” he says, emotionless, his eyes never leaving the glow of my iPhone screen.
Jonas mercifully returns with my drink. His contorted smile is now clearly paining him. His left eye twitches as he tells me he appreciates my patience. At this point, I don’t care if he’s offering me a glass of raw ether. I gulp thirstily at the cold, cheap gin with a sliver of browning lemon peel floating in it. “Yourfoodshouldberightout,” Jonas offers, as thought it were all one word.
As the cold gin hits my empty belly, I become aware that the song “Stacey’s Mom” by Fountains of Wayne has started once more and realize it has in fact been on repeat the entire time we’ve been in the restaurant. I make eye contact with Jonas as he punches in an order at the servers’ station and he offers me an aggressively-enthusiastic thumbs up. His nose begins to bleed.
It’s at this point two common but horrendous inevitabilities occur: YouTube loses its deathgrip on my son’s attention AND he becomes hungry to the point of making irrational but non-negotiable demands. “I want Uncle Tim to eat with us!” he says loudly, smashing the iPhone my work pays for to the table. Grandma and grandpa flag down a hostess to ask for another table as I try to explain to my son that we’ve already ordered dinner and my brother Tim actually lives in Regina, Saskatchewan. There is no reasoning with him. They’re will be no dinner without his uncle. I take another swig of gin.
♫ Did your mom get back from her business trip?
(Business trip)
Is she there, or is she trying to give me the slip?
(Give me the slip) ♫
Jonas delivers dinner. I can’t be certain but I swear he does a full 360 spin as he arrives. He is simultaneously euphoric and somehow newly-emaciated. There is a vein visible in the white of his left eye. It’s clear he feels it’s his purpose is to serve us, but I am now filled with fear every time he nears our table.
He places pudding-soft penne noodles in front of my son and a Cobb salad in front of me. My dish is roughly 40% raw red onions. I raise my head to mention the onions and Jonas is gone, like an unhinged Batman leaving Commissioner Gordon mid-question.
My son’s response to seeing his dinner is immediate and apoplectic: “I DON’T WANT THIS! I WANT GRILLED CHEESE!” He says it as though we’d been discussing grilled cheese all day. He berates my parental shortcomings with spittle-flecked vitriol that would make Hitler’s misgivings about the Treaty of Versailles seem moderate.
The grandparents beside us have now abandoned their meals and have bowed their heads in quiet prayer. It’s not clear if they are praying for us or praying for delivery from us. I hear hushed and passionate phrases in Latin. When the light over their table flickers ominously, I decide we can’t wait around to find out what it is or to whom they have been praying. I implore my son to try his dinner by bribing him with the promise of ice cream. Unless I can somehow challenge him to race me in order to complete a task, I am officially out of parenting tricks.
Thankfully, the idea of ice cream incentivizes my son to ingest two pieces of penne pasta and then loudly assert that he is full. He promptly goes limp like a protestor supporting the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and begins slowly sliding down off his seat to toward the slushy, dank space under our table. “Get. Up. Here.” I say through gritted teeth. Cobb salad and shitty penne noodles are scattered over our menus. The tacky residue of slopped chocolate milk permeates every surface in our reach. I grip my martini like I’m clinging to a life boat.
I grab desperately at my son under the table and seize on something I think is his arm. It turns out it his ankle and I hoist him one handed into the air by his boot. Somehow while he was under the table he has lost his shirt. I’m holding him in the air like a marlin I’ve just captured and smiling crazily at the grandparents beside us. I am now silently begging them to start some shit.
We need to go.
I take one last spoonful of raw red onions into my mouth and throw my wallet across the dining room at Jonas. He is at my side in less than a second.
“JooNeeThaMachee?” Jonas is gone. His mouth and nose are now full of blood and his eyes have glazed over. He’s 100% server now. He’s never been happier. He hasn’t got much time left to live.
As Jonas punches numbers into the germ-caked debit machine, I chug the final half of my gin martini. My son is scraping gum off the underside of the table with his front teeth and making animal noises. “Here you are, sir.” Jonas loses a fingernail and as he presents the bill for kids pasta, a martini, a salad, and a chocolate milk. It’s only $98. I fight my son under the table and try to put his shirt back on as the tip options flash by asking if I’d like to give Jonas 45% of the bill, 78% of the bill, or if I’d prefer to just leave him the keys to my Subaru.
I mash keys on the interac machine as I get my son’s shirt on and I throw handfuls of his remaining pasta directly into my shopping bags with my bare hands. I am drenched in sweat. We sprint for the door and Jonas seems like he might kiss me goodbye as he screams “THANKS FOR COMING IN!” He has already started rolling cutlery into black cloth napkins and refilling ketchups.
We emerge from the restaurant back into the mall that now seems perversely well lit. I feel the urge to hide my face in my collar to shield my identity from the patrons of LensCrafters like I’m coming out of a mid-day porno at a peep show. I steel myself for the six kilometre journey back to our car and as I turn back to my son I see that he has somehow lost his pants and is urinating into a fake plant.
I start weeping.
