An Evening Out

My family went out to eat tonight. At one of our favorite places. 
A favorite, because the food is cooked right in front of you, and the chefs often do cool tricks and tease the diners and such. So you basically get a show while watching your food cook.
It's great! 
lol Plus the food is pretty great too. 

Though admittedly, each experience is slightly different when we go to eat dinner there. 
After all, we don't always get the same chef twice. Especially because we end up visiting different locations...and we only end up going like once or twice a year because it's kinda well...pricey lol. 

So some experiences are great! Where the food is delicious, the chef is fun to watch, and it's just...well great.
Others are so so. Where the chef just cooks the food, where the food tastes weird, or isn't quite what we were expecting, etc. 

And unfortunately, the last couple of experiences have been more in the soso range. 
Less of a show, the food not tasting right....

Especially the last last one we went to.
 It was just. O.o Weird. 

So understandably, we weren't quite sure what to expect when Kikay decided that we should eat there again. 
This time though, we (and by we I mean mother dearest) thought ahead and looked up reviews of the different restaurant locations in the surrounding valleys to see what people thought of it.

The ones located in my valley? Nope. No good.
Our favorite to go to was two valleys away from us....so  kinda not worth the drive out because it was oooo far away.
Our old favorite location had been closed down in the last year or so.....

But mother dearest came across a location midway between all the family that we hadn't yet tried. 
So we met up there.

Which first impressions.
Nice looking....the hostess staff didn't give off the greatest first impression as they didn't really greet us or acknowledge us when we entered.
But the place was big, it was clean, and had people in it. 

I do think that we all weren't expecting to get much of a show though, when we were taken to our seats.
As the table next to us was in the middle of having their food prepared in front of them.
And the chef wasn't doing any of the cool hijinks that my family has come to love. 

So we were preparing ourselves to basically just watch the noodles, veggies, and meat cook. 

When our chef came out.
And proceeded to entertain us the entire meal. lol. 
It was great!

And I'm pretty sure the table next to us was jealous, as well as the other nearby tables. 
Watching us laugh and clap and just have fun interacting with the chef as he showed us a variety of tricks as well as surprising us and such. 

Which made an already good dinner end on a great note. 
Because it  really feels like it's been a while since I've seen one of the chefs actually enjoying cooking for a group. 
I feel like the other chefs in the building were all...well....just there to cook. Nothing more.

But really, it's probably more than that. 

Like I can see chefs not being willing to put on a show if they get no reaction from the people watching.
Why show all your tricks if there's no smile, no applause, just blank faces? 

So the fact that we were smiling, and laughing, and applauding the chef.
Probably inspired him to pull out more tricks.

As they probably all come prepared.
But I can totally understand that if your audience doesn't react to your first couple tricks....why would you want to show them any thing more?

I get that way with customers at my own work when I can tell they're not paying attention. So I give less details than I would to customers who show a genuine interesting in wanting to hear what I have to say. 

So it was probably a nice change of pace for this chef. To get a group of diners actually wanting to see a show....instead of just getting their food delivered to them. 

Until you next read these words;
I'll be watching the leaves.
Enjoy the day!

-Sarnic Dirchi