Yesterday I got home from one long, demanding, depressing stint at work. I had spent the day working very hard to take care of a very nice person (with a lovely family) who was dying of AIDS. Meanwhile, my own adored sister waited for me at home, having trekked out from the desert for a rare visit wherein just the two of us were to spend a few days together. It was time to get the weekend festivities into swing. I was in a mood that could be described as equal parts melancholy, appreciative of my vitality and relationships, ready to party, and ravenously hungry.
Ashley didn't have any particular leanings, so I chose the Belmont--walking distance and festive. Nick and I had been there once for drinks only, and its impressive bar had met our standards of strong drinks made well. I thought I'd remembered a decent-looking food menu with some veggie options. Feeling that the world was the oyster of two young sisters taking on the town, I chose this as the place we would start our night.
We were seated right away, and they did deliver on some near-perfect gimlets. But that's where anything positive about the experience ends. After we saw that there was nothing vegetarian on the menu (what bar had I confused it with?), we should have just finished our first round and moved along. But I hate to be that high-maintenance vegetarian, and I didn't really care that much about what I ate, as long as it was food. So I picked the heartiest salad on the menu. Ashley ordered the truffle chicken.
Before I go any further, let me set up a background. I've had bad service in my lifetime. I've been to La Boheme. I've been to Fraiche in Culver City. Hell, I've been to Paris as a non-French-speaking American during the France-US war discord of 2003. It all pales in comparison to my visit to The Belmont.
This was, unequivocally, the WORST service of my life.
The food took an hour. Obviously, this is marginally acceptable for the simplicity of our order no matter what--had we been apologized to, had we been offered a chance to order an appetizer to sate us while we waited, had someone come to take our request for our much-coveted second round. But none of this occurred. Nobody came for that whole time. Not even a busboy to give us some water. I began to wonder if there was some repellent magnetic forcefield around our table. In fact, maybe it was some kind of blindingly bright nuclear forcefield, because our server deliberately avoided even brief eye contact with us. Finally we both stood up, indicating our readiness to stoop to the low of dropping a twenty on the table and walking out. This made the food show up. Even after that, we had to stand up to flag someone down to get our server to come over to take our order for more drinks. We had to repeat the third-party-flagging when my salad left me totally un-full and I needed some auxiliary fries. We had to pretend to be leaving to get the check. Meanwhile, the table next to us got served a three-course meal with drink refills. Ashley and I both pride ourselves on being great tippers--I'm a twenty percent minimum kind of girl--but let's just say that both of us saw fit to use the tipping process as a means of making a statement here.
The food was fine--Ashley said her chicken was good and well-appropriated with truffle. My salad was decent, although someone needs to tell these people for what uses balsamic reduction is intended, because it's not to water it down into a vinaigrette--hence the "reduction" process. I guess I can also give the place a point or two for the intriguing oddity of playing a collection of music comprised solely of the original recordings of Rock Band and Guitar Hero songs.
I fear that my fair sister and I were the victims of some meatist ideology here. It's happened to me a few times. Meatism is the phenomenon of being treated as a second-class citizen at a restaurant when you order vegetarian. They assume you're being cheap, when in fact, many of us veggies would be willing to drop some cash if the place would just put one interesting-sounding herbivorous entree on the menu. This is Los Angeles, people. I know there are plenty of flexitarians, pseudo-vegans, and anorexitarians, all of whom will eat meat in a "when in Rome" kind of setting. But there are a lot of us who really believe in sticking to it, too, and don't expect that it offends restauranteurs in such a manner as to provoke maltreatment. This discriminatory policy might work in some place in the middle of America, but I have a hard time seeing its viability in WeHo. It's Bush-era chic to not offer meatless options at a bar and then treat people like shit for not ordering filet mignon. FSM bless Obama.
It's not like you have it all going on, Belmont. The crowd was decidedly thinning by the time we left at 11:00. You remember that girl in junior high that acted really snobby, but she wore stirrup leggings and had a Hello Kitty backpack and didn't really brush her hair and had no idea that it wasn't cool? You wouldn't have been caught dead going to her birthday, but you might pretend she was all right momentarily if she had a pack of Bubblicious she was willing to share. The Belmont is like that. This establishment is having an identity crisis. It wants to be all snooty-hot, but it's full of douches and staffed by the same. It's right around the corner, so I'm not saying I'll never show up there for a drink again, but I'll come with cash in hand and already fed.
I have to work in a little PSA: you only die of AIDS if you stop taking your meds. So get tested often, and if you have HIV, stick with your treatment plan.
(Image credit: millionsofmilkshakes.com)
