Tilapia Is The New Cod

In honor of completing my Five Weird Things post, I took my daughter to Red Lobster…thought it would be a fitting tribute, since Sherri loves the place so much.  For that very reason, I will not mention the vague contempt which I, a New Englander, have always held for seafood restaurant chains.  I will say that I remember very clearly how nice it was that I used to be able to get live lobsters for a buck seventy-five a pound, or a buck and a half if I happened to catch a lobsterman in the parking lot at the seafood stand.  

The service we received tonight was noteworthy, as I shall attempt to relate:

“Good evening, sir, my name is Gabe, and I’ll be taking care of you this evening.   Can I offer you something to drink?”
Heidi orders a Coke, and I order iced tea – no lemon.  
“Excellent. Would you care for an appetizer this evening?”
“No, thank you.”
“Alright.  Would you like to hear the specials?”
“No, thank you.  I think we’re ready to order.”
“Great,” says Gabe, turning his attention to Heidi.  “What can I get for you?”
“I’ll have the shrimp Caesar salad.”
“Excellent.  And for your choice of vegetables?  We have mashed potatoes, rice pilaf, steamed vegetables, or cole slaw.”
Heidi and I exchange quizzical looks.
There is a moment of bemused silence, with Gabe’s pen hovering patiently over his order pad.  I recover first, and ask the obvious question, “There’s a choice of vegetables with a salad?”
Gabe smiles benevolently at us, his apparently uber-bumpkin patrons.  “A salad comes with the shrimp, yes.”
Still bewildered, I frown slightly and ask again, “But she ordered the shrimp Caesar salad.  Doesn’t that pretty much already have vegetables?”
“Oh!” exclaims Gabe.  “Of course.”
Gabe scribbles a dozen horizontal lines on his pad, then writes furiously.  While I cannot see what he is writing, I imagine it to be, confused chick gets SHRIMP CAESAR.
He then turns to me.  “And you, sir?”
“I’ll have the Sam Adams battered fish and chips.”
“Excellent.  That comes with chips, which are actually French Fries.  You can order another side of your choice, if you like.  We have mashed potatoes, rice pilaf…”
“Another side?  Sounds great.  I’d like the cole slaw, please.”
Gabe fixes me momentarily with a glance that, in retrospect, should have seemed significant, but at the time could have meant…confusion? Disbelief? That he’ll be blogging this later?
“Great,” he says, “I’ll be right back with your drinks and cole slaw.”
And he is off before I can ask, What did you say? Did you just say that you’d be right back with our drinks and cole slaw?
I ask Heidi instead.  She agrees, that’s what he said.
Couldn’t be, I postulated.  It’s noisy here, and we must have misunderstood.
When he brought our drinks (and my dinner salad), he hesitated for a moment before asking, “Would you like me to bring your cole slaw now, or with your fish, sir?”  He fixes me with a look of concerned confusion, as though I had ordered a steak with chocolate sauce.
I see his confusion and raise him a puzzlement and a confloption.  (He doesn’t realize it at this point, but I can see that he’ll be flummoxed at the turn.)  “With my dinner will be fine,” I say.  I am in no mood to have cole slaw with my salad.  
When dinner arrives, he sets down Heidi’s Caesar salad, and then turns his attention to me.  He places the side dish of cole slaw at my left, and sets the basket of fish in front of me.

It is a large-ish basket of fish.  

There are no chips.

It is a basket containing only fish.

“Is there anything else I can get for you?” Gabe asks.  From the look on his face, it is clear that Gabe wishes to escape us and what clearly seem to him to be bizarre requests.
“Yes,” I say.  “Where are my chips?  I thought fish and chips would come with actual, you know, chips.  French Fries.  Pommes frites.”  (Okay, I made the “pommes frites” part up.)
Gabe casts his eyes about in a manner reminiscent of a garden-raiding rabbit caught snacking by a Rottweiler for whom the moment carries no real urgency.  “You ordered cole slaw instead of chips, sir.”
“I did?”
“Yes, sir.”  He wheels over a chalk board and proceeds to draw a flow chart of our initial conversation, in which it seems I did, in fact, order fish and chips, hold the chips, add a side of slaw.