Reasons why I won’t be going back to Duke’s Landing:
1) The guy who has the 4’ dread hanging off of his balding head and who clocks in at about 5’ 5” but is wearing the flannel shirt made for a guy who is 6’ 3” gave me the menu and said,
“Here’s our menu, the cook is doing the special a lot these days.”
“What’s the special?”
“I don’t know… it’s on the board out there.”
I looked ‘out there’ and saw that I had seen the specials sign before as it was actually painted on the sign for the restaurant. The special was two eggs, hash browns, and toast for $4.35. I looked at the menu and opted for the ham and cheese omelet and a cup of coffee. Rasta man took the “menu” (two pieces of 8.5 x 11” paper stapled in the upper left corner), sighed, ran his finger down the sheet until he found the ham and cheese omelet, looked at me like I just asked him to solve an insanely complicated math question using only an abacus and a box of toothpicks.
He walked out the front door, down the stairs, and into the basement of the building. The only other person in the place at the other end of the bar piped up and said,
“Hey, what’s up? You getting the special? I’m the cook.”
“Uh, no. I was thinking about the ham and cheese omelet.”
He was dejected.
“Oh.”
I quickly decided that either they had no food, only knew how to cook one thing but made a menu to look like they knew what they were doing, or they were lazy dick-brained mongoloids.
The Rasta guy came back up and said, “Sorry, had to see if we had ham.” He then told the cook in whispered tones what the order was, they both looked sad, then The Cook sulked upstairs.
“OK, anything else with that?”
“Uh, yeah. Coffee would be great [
because, you know, I may have changed my mind from my original order of coffee and a ham and cheese omelet].”
2) The coffee was more water than flavor, but it came with a refill, so with the 40 ounces of coffee I drank I probably got the equivalent of one normal cup of coffee.
3) While I sat waiting for my food, two other people came in separately and inquired about breakfast. Rasta informed them about The Special, which he still didn’t know, and didn’t offer a menu. He must have learned from me that if you give someone a menu that there is a slight chance that they’ll want something that is printed on it. The nerve. They asked for menus nonetheless and one opted for The Special, the other wanted a veggie omelet and yet another search into the basement, followed by a pained conversation with The Cook and heavy sighs as they begrudgingly agreed to make said omelet.
4) My food came and The Cook took his seat again at the end of the bar to look at his laptop (he looked a bit like Lazlo, the genius closet dwelling burnout from “Real Genius”). So, there was TOO much butter on the toast, and even better was the fact that the butter had turned. Even better that THAT was that everything on my plate was cooked in this butter. Yum. I had the plate for only about 15 seconds, didn’t even unroll my fork from the napkin, and The Cook looked up and asked with too much perk in his voice, “How’s that omelet?”
“I don’t know… haven’t tasted yet. I’ll let you know in a minute, after I start eating.”
He looked back to his computer before I stopped talking.
5) After eating all the somewhat rancid food (thank God for the cast iron stomach!) I gave Rasta my card. He ran it and gave me the receipt and my card. Then he said, “Oh, that’s our copy.” I watched him spend two full minutes shuffling dollars around and picking up various trays in the register, trying to find the most feng shui location for the receipt. Then it struck him, “Oh, you need to sign this.”
“Yeah, I was wondering about that.”
He gave the receipt back and mentioned something about there being no space for a tip.
“Don’t sweat it, I’ll take care of it. I might need a pen though.”
“Oh… yeah.”
He handed me a pen and I took the receipt, noticing that there was indeed a place for a tip, so I gave a too generous tip because people with special needs shouldn’t be punished for their disability.
I filled it out, signed it, and handed it back. He looked at it and stalled.”
“Oh, uh, you put the tip on here?”
“Uh, yeah?”
“Oh… how do I get it off of here? And I only did the card for the food total, not the tip. Will the machine know?”
“What? I don’t know, man. Someone probably runs batches or something at night? I don’t know anything about that shit.”
“Oh.” He stalled and looked at the receipt.
“Why don’t you just cross out the tip and give me the tip in cash.”
I looked at him, blinked once, blinked twice, folded my tongue up in front of my left eyetooth in an expression of confusion.”
“Look, I don’t have any cash. Just, fuckin’… I don’t know what to tell you. This is all very basic stuff.”
“Yeah,” he said quietly. “We’ll figure it out later. A lot of work for three bucks though.”
“Yeah, I don’t know what to tell you, dude. Thanks for the food.”
And then I left.
So, I know times are tough for small businesses. I know supplies might run low. I know that 35-year old men who wear their giant father’s shirts as mumus and have hair that makes me think of a cat puking up a massive hairball are sometimes not as smart as I would like to give them credit for. But here’s the deal:
- In West Africa I’ve eaten goat liver off of a bike spoke, kebab style, that was cooked directly on coal, giving the experience a little more grit. This was cooked, more often than not, by various 300-year old toothless women who more than once outwardly displayed a lot of TB symptoms. But they were nice.
- In Nice, France, I ate Chinese food that tasted like it was cooked in spit.
- In East Africa I ate prawns that tasted like a foot.
- I have ended up with goat balls and what I believe to be a fish brain or air bladder in my mouth.
- I have damn near busted a tooth on numerous occasions on various sized bits of rock and gravel that have fallen into my food bowl.
- I have eaten a chicken chwarma in Senegal and then spent the next 5 hours puking and shitting in the bathroom and puking on my balls and shitting the bed.
- I have been served by people who have unapologetically stuck their fingers in my coffee, by people who, for no reason, have openly loathed me, and by people who barely could grasp the fact that I was alive and that they were there to take an order.
Take all of this into consideration and know that when I say that eating at Duke’s Landing was STILL the worst dining experience of my life, well, damn… it must have sucked.
Dear Duke’s Landing,
Please stop.
Not your friend,
P. Royale
No X’s, no O’s
