I love my little ‘hood but if there is one thing it lacks, it is restaurants. There are lots of taco shops, several cheap breakfast places, a couple of Mexican sit-down restaurants, three fancy white table cloth places, a crappy “American Bistro” with bad neon but a killer view, a German restaurant that scares me, and Pepe’s, which is the only place I go to with any regularity. Pepe’s has good pizza and pasta e fagioli and they let me bring my own wine with only $5 for corkage. I guess that sounds like alot of choices and now that I have listed all of them I guess the ‘hood does not really lack restaurants. It just seems to me that it does because there is not much I want to go out for.

So I was really excited when nine months ago I noticed a big sign in the window next door to my bank on Newport Street. “Coming soon – Portugalia” the sign read. A Portugese restaurant! Something new, and even better, something different! As the months went by, though, the placed stayed dark. A little downstairs area that has a bar and a few tables, two refrigerators stocked with a bit of beer, wine and soft drinks is visible from the street. But mail just collected on the floor for months and months. One day I asked some guy entering the building what was going on, and he said the guy opening the place was having trouble with permits. I guess when you open something at the beach there are extra permits, and homie had not done his research.

Finally, after all this time, I get a letter. Actually, my boyfriend gets the letter, I guess he signed some petition the guy from Portugalia needed about how his restaurant would affect parking in the area. It was a two page letter all about how the owner had really struggled for nine months to bring us, his future customers, a little taste of Portugal. He had a long drawn-out tale of woe. The letter was full of spelling typos; also, there was no coupon. Why go through all the expense of mailing that thing without a coupon?

Anyhow, Portugalia opened just under two weeks ago, and last night we went to check it out. Portugalia is not going to make it. Unless a bolt of lightening hits, there is no way.

The little bar is just a teaser as the actual restaurant is upstairs. You would never know it was there if it weren’t for the little bar. The restaurant sign is painted on the wall, but I am not sure you would know what it was all about driving by. Last night the bar was empty and dark; on the street there was a sign that said “come on up!”

We started going up the stairs. Mark was hesitating. He kept saying “are you sure?” I wanted to see what was going on up there. We walked into a little bar where a bartender, a host-person, and a server were all hanging out. The bar is tiny, the dining floor is huge. The tables and chairs all look like 1980’s desk furniture. It looks like a giant conference room with glass tables and cloth chairs. It was very dark. There are some fake grapevines here and there and murals of Portuguese villages on the wall, to try to lighten things up. The host-person said we could sit where we wanted, and we chose one of the ginormous four-tops that could easily seat eight. There were four other tables occupied and it was six P.M. Not bad for a place that no one knows about.

We got menus and the wine list. The wine list had several pages but there was nothing on them. Some were blank and some had a couple of wines listed. Why? There were three red Portuguese wines available. I decided on the mid-range one for $26. Mark said “not a good sign” and pointed to the dead flowers on the table. The server was running around like a chicken with her head cut off, and she only had five tables. The hostess-person came over. “She’s a little busy,” she said. “Can I start you with an appetizer?”

Dude. Beverage first; that is in the Service Rulebook. That would be Rule #1, in fact. “No,” I say sweetly. “But I would like to order some wine.” I give her the order and she goes off to the tiny bar where I can see quite a few bottles of red wine lined up, non of which seem to be on the “list.” She comes back. “uh, we are out of that wine, would you like to try something else?” and hands me the list with the remaining two listed red wines on it. “uh,” I say, looking at it with a furrowed brow, “what DO you have?” She points at the house wine. “We have that one! It is SO good!” Not having a lot of choice, and not being offered one of the many selections behind the bar, we go with the house wine.

The server is still running around and the owner, dressed in a suit, is delivering food. He walks like he hasn’t had a bowel movement in a while, and he is young. The server finally comes over and apologizes over and over. Turns out she is not really a server; she is a family friend. Well, that is pretty obvious because she really has absolutely no idea what she is doing. And the host and the bartender are not doing anything at all to help her cope. “Not a good sign,” my boyfriend, who manages the faculty club/restaurant at San Diego State, keeps saying.

I ask her what appetizers are good. At this point, Mark and I are not sure we are in it for the long haul. We’ll try an appetizer and then decide what to do. The server says the linguica sausage with potatoes and fava beans is good. So we order that. She runs along. All the food for the other tables is coming out and she is trying to figure out where it all goes. Not two minutes after we order our appetizer she comes over to us with two dinners. “Did you order the blah blah blah?” She says. The owner comes out, leads her to the right table. The server is apologizing loudly to everyone.

The menu consists of a few appetizers, some sandwiches, a few “Euro-Pizzas,” and several entrees. There is one entree called “a taste of Portugal” where you can choose three of the entrees; only in Mark’s menu there is a sticker over that item. The server comes over, and I ask her if “a taste of Portugal” is available. “Nope.” She says bluntly. “The kitchen couldn’t handle it.” She runs off. “After 10 days?” I say. “Not a good sign,” Mark says. “We could try a Euro-Pizza,” I say.

Our appetizer arrives. It is a plate of French fries and a few pieces of linguica on toothpicks. It tastes good, and we are starving so we eat it. I can’t understand how sausage cooked with fava beans, onions, and potatoes turned into sausage and French fries. “Not a good sign, not a good sign…” Mark comes over to sit by me so we can check out the carnage together. “This place is never going to make it.” I say.

We still have a half bottle of wine. It doesn’t taste good unless you are eating something with it. I am thinking of the Euro-Pizza for $7.95 as I am not willing to take a chance on the skewer of beef thing for $17.95. Most of the tables leave and three guys come in. Then a party of ten come in. The server is totally incapable of dealing with it. She simply, can’t deal. The owner walks through from time to time; I wish he would come over to our table – I might feel sorry for him and want to help him. But he doesn’t. A little kid, part of the 10-top, points to the wall above us. “Jesus,” he says. His daddy says, “yes, that is Jesus.” I look up.

There is a mural above us of a little fishing village. Above the ocean, a giant Jesus spreads his arms. Jesus is, strangely, blue. He has a blue face. He is the blue Jesus. Where he spreads his arms the waves are huge, like he got pissed off at the town and is sending tidal waves to wreck the village and kill all the people. “Not a good sign, for that village.” I say.

The server is trying to take an order from the three guys. They have some strange requests, like wanting diet Coke. This nearly sends the server over the edge, though I have no idea why. “Sorry!” she tells the guys. “We are out of that!” They are also out of most everything on the menu at 6:45 on a Sunday night. “Sorry!” She tells them. “We just served our last pizza!”

Ok, that was it. Mark and I decide there is only one thing to do and that is to go to Pepe’s. I go to the bathroom first, and then I look into the giant kitchen where the owner, the bartender, and the host-person are all hanging out. The owner is making a salad or something and barking orders at the other two, who are totally ignoring him. The host-person sees me, so I ask her for the check. She tells me she’ll get my server. She then goes out on the floor where the server is STILL trying to take an order from the three guys, and WAITS there to tell her to bring us our check.

“Not a good sign.” Mark says.
“This place is never going to make it.” I say.

The server comes by, sort of in a shitty mood now, and says “I’ll get your check.” But first she has to tackle the beverage order for the table of ten. We wait, and wait. I tell Mark we should just leave $30 and split. That would cover the bill and even leave more of a tip than was deserved. He wants to wait though. The server runs to the bar, gets two drinks, brings them, then runs back for two more. Rule #7 – get all your drinks, then deliver them at the same time.

Finally we get up and go to the bar where we are going to hand her the money and leave. She looks at us like we are the most horrible assholes. “I am sorry,” she sniffs. “I am the only one here.”

“No you aren’t,” I say. “There are three other people on the floor besides you.”
“I’m the only server,” she argues.
“You have to make them help you,” I say.
“You’ll never make it here like this,” Mark says, being Mr. Restaurant Manager.
“Can you tell the owner that?” she says. “He needs to hear it.”

Mark and I look at each other. “Okay,” we say. She goes into the kitchen and screams, “JASON, A COUPLE AT THE BAR WANT TO SPEAK WITH YOU.”

But Jason is delivering skewers of beef to the party of ten. I, for one, am not going to wait until he is done doing this so that I can tell him he is going to fail.

“Let’s go to Pepe’s,” Mark says.
“They are never going to make it,” I say. “Nope, they aren’t.” Mark says. We walk down the stairs, away from the blue Jesus and into the sunlight.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 16th, 2004 at 7:35 am and is filed under Tales from a Strange Land. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.