Eating Outside the Box

My husband and I spent this past weekend out of my comfort zone and it was indeed a jolt to my system, lulled as I am by the slow pace of Maine. Pittsburgh is a lot bigger than Portland, so naturally there was a ton of traffic everywhere, much of it either going up a hill or down a hill or over a bridge, crossing one of the three rivers that meet in that city. There were also a ton more people than I am used to, hundreds and hundreds, or maybe thousands of them dressed in various arrangements of black and gold pants, shirts and hats in preparation for Sunday's big football game between the Pittsburgh Steelers and the LA Rams. Team spirit wafted through the downtown streets, getting thicker and thicker the closer you got to the stadium.

Alas, it was not on the menu.....

One experience I shall long remember involved dinner out. Our friends had gone to great lengths to book a table at Poulet Bleu, "Pittsburgh's hottest new restaurant." They were diligent enough to score a reservation on a Saturday night. I was excited to try one of their allegedly superb chicken dishes, especially the exotic blue chicken, which is what the restaurant name means in English. Now that would be something to write home about!

Turns out there was no blue chicken, or chicken of any kind, on the menu -- not even in the standard white. And our 8:00 pm reservation got us seated at a table at precisely 8:50, a.k.a. ten minutes to nine, better known as "almost bedtime." There was a table for us, it's just that the people who occupied it before us were still in residence. They had finished their meal and paid the bill, yet remained, sitting around gabbing and oblivious to the huddle of hungry patrons waiting in the vestibule, staring into the dining room longingly like orphans in a Dickens novel. According to the restaurant's host,  suggesting they leave would be "rude." (I thought making us wait almost an hour to be seated was rude, but hey, that's just me.)

Now we're back in Maine with winter approaching, and since all the tourists have fled we can get into any restaurant at any time, no problem. Alas, nobody offers blue chicken here, so fulfilling that dream will have to wait. Oh well, there's always plain old dependable red lobster.