the truculent vegetable

Obviously being vegan and eating out is hard. Of course, you just know you're asking trouble if you end up eating at a grill style restaurant. Don't ask how I ended up in there. It wasn't my idea.

Well, I think that's what the restaurant was trying to be. It was hard to tell.

The building used to house a Thai restaurant about five years ago. Clearly when the previous owners left, they didn't take all their decorations with them as small Thai mural still hangs over one of the windows. Upon walking in the waitress asks if we had a reservation to which we replied no. She then proceeded to look around like we were stupid not to make a reservation. Yeah, we really need a reservation when the place is practically empty. Please.

 ANYWAY. After squinting down at the menu (the lighting was practically non-existent that it was impossible to see in there), I discovered that surprise, surprise, there was nothing to eat. Well, that was a lie. The ONE thing that edible on that list was pasta with tomato sauce. How creative.

Now, something  you should know about me. I hate pasta. I used to eat it as a kid then got turned off it. It's taken me a long time to get back into it and even then, it takes a lot of effort to make the past a good. Two things are key to good pasta 1) it needs to be chewy. Not mushy. 2) the sauce has to be great.

Of course, the pasta tonight was neither. I swear it was left in the pot for five hours and the sauce was disgusting. I ended up just eating the bread rolls - at leas they were hot. And not mushy.

To make my night worse, the "live music" was louder than the music I'm subjected to at arenas for hockey games. And it was just as bad.

So all in all... ambiance was horrible (bad lighting, left over Thai decorations in a restaurant that tries to be semi-Italian and the music was awful) and the food was worse.

Three hours on and I can still taste the pasta sauce. GROSS. GROSS. GROSS.