Breakfast in Austin is Different

Maybe I could have had this experience anywhere in the world.  I could be romanticizing a bit.

But I think not.  I think I could what happened could only have happened in Austin.

I should be writing up my summary of the films we saw at this year’s Butt-Numb-a-Thon but I’ll tell you, I like writing about the things that make Butt-Numb-a-Thon about so much more than 24 hours in a movie theatre.  If all you do is spend 24 hours in a movie theatre, you don’t get it.  I read comments from folks who see a particular line up and complain that it is lame.  They don’t get it.  The movies we watch are a big deal.  But they aren’t everything.

One of our BNAT traditions is to go to breakfast at the Magnolia Cafe.  There is one reason for this breakfast.  Eggs Benedict.

There are those who claim they have eaten the finest eggs Benedict in all the world.  Unless they have eaten at the Magnolia cafe, those people are wrong.  It isn’t their fault.  They don’t really know.

This year, five of us went to The Magnolia for our eggs Benedict.

Well, four went for the Benedict.  One of us went for some other food.  I don’t remember what it was because who cares?

I always order my eggs lightly poached because I like my eggs Benedict soggy.  Usually, the eggs are medium poached, which means they are still runny but I like ’em extra runny.

I made my regular order and my plate came out first because it was a special order.  I cut into my eggs and they were not runny at all.  They weren’t lightly poached.  They were poached hard.  Travesty!

I feel bad when I have to complain about my food.  I don’t feel badly because the chefs have to re-make it.  I feel badly because I know the server is working hard and they thought they were done with me.  They have other stuff to do.  And now they have to fix a problem that isn’t their fault.

But I wasn’t about to eat eggs Benedict without runny eggs.

So when the rest of the orders came out, I apologized to our server (name redacted for reasons to be seen later) and began to show her my eggs.

“Don’t apologize,” she said, “those are wrong.  The rest of you need to cut into your eggs.”

Everyone else cut into their eggs to discover they were all poached hard.

Well now she was pissed.  She snapped her fingers and called her manager over.  She pointed at our plates and said “HE ordered lightly poached eggs and THEY ordered medium poached eggs and LOOK AT THEM!”

The manager was suitably appalled and promised he’d get new eggs right away (he thought that would be faster than getting us new plates of food) and promised we’d get more hollandaise sauce as well.  Off he scurried to fetch us some runny eggs.

Our server apologized again then went to help other tables.

We got our food a bit later and all was well.  She came back to make sure everything was all right and we told her it was and thanked her for making sure our orders were made correctly.

She proceeded to rant:  “I was so pissed about this, you guys.  I stormed into the kitchen and I yelled at the cooks.  I was all, like, are you fisting me with this shit??????“

I have no idea if the story is as funny to anyone reading it as it was to those of us sitting in the middle of a crowded restaurant on a Saturday morning but we thought it was hilarious.

We told the story to everyone we knew.  And we spent the rest of the weekend finding ways to work “fisting me with this shit” into our conversations.

She got one hell of a tip.

I tell this story because when I do my write up of BNAT, I’m probably going to say that Busby Berkley fisted us with some shit at the end of The Gang’s All Here and I figure you might be interested to know why I said that.