Friday was my 16th wedding anniversary. Stephen and I hired the babysitter and we went out for dinner. This was after I had run around trying to track down the pizza and cheesy bread sticks that I had ordered for the kids for dinner. I submitted the order online at 5pm requesting that the pizza to arrive at 7pm. They are usually a few minutes early but not that day. We waited and waited and waited and I finally called at 7:20pm they said that they did not know what happened to my order then told me it was just coming out of the oven but could not be delivered for 30 minutes because they were so busy! Huh? But, why was it just coming out of the oven at 7:25 when I had ordered it to be delivered by 7pm? Ok, never mind, I told them. I would come by to pick it up.

Three minutes later I walked in the door and after 8 minutes of waiting and them searching, they told me that the pizza had already been delivered. Huh? But, I CALLED and we agreed that I would pick it up. Stephen was still at home and had tried calling me to tell me it had been delivered but for some reason my cellphone did not work in PapaJohn's. Papajohn's said that this order was going to be free (I'll still watch my cc statement to make sure) and I also have a credit for two pizzas of my choice. We'll be ordering two extra-large with all the toppings sometime in the near future.

Anyway, after I went home and reapplied deodorant (it is stressful tracking down pizza!), we went to dinner at this new restaurant that had opened where that other restaurant used to be (they closed at the beginning of May). The new one is an Italian restaurant and this is the third restaurant of this particular chain. The place was packed and there appeared to be a lot of people waiting for tables. Our reservation was at 7:45 and we arrived 5 minutes early and were told it would be about 10 minutes until our table would be ready. No worries. Stephen went to the bar to get us drinks. Ten minutes later when our table was ready, he was just getting back. Apparently the restaurant was out of draft beer. Ok, they had opened 3 days before so perhaps something was up so we shrugged it off.

We were seated and drank our drinks (cosmo for me, bottled beer for Stephen) and we waited and waited and waited and waited for a waiter/waitress to come by. Finally after 15 minutes, I stopped the hostess who was walking by and said "Excuse me, we have been been seated for quite some time and no one has come by" and she apologized and a few minutes later our waitress come over. She told us that she did not know we were in her section (perhaps plausible except that our table was next to the one she was serving before she came by). We wanted wine with our dinner so Stephen asked for their house red wine but they were out of wine. OUT OF WINE! Every kind of wine. At first Stephen could not believe what she said as he had asked for the house red and thought she meant they were out of that. No, they were out of ALL WINE. On a Friday night! So, I ordered their "specialty" cocktail which was a strawberry limoncello martini and Stephen had nothing else to drink.

We then ordered an appetizer (calamari). They were out of calamari! Ok, perhaps they misjudged how much calamari they would sell their first week. We just went ahead and ordered dinner. The waitress came by four times to apologize because my drink was taking so long and then she said that the manager was giving it to me for free due to the wait. The number of apologies for the drink was out of proportion for the wait for the drink, IMO. Maybe it was to make up for the wait we had for her to come over after we were seated?

Dinner was really, really good though so that made the excruciatingly long wait tolerable. I know they were going through some first week opening pains and I definitely will go back but not for a while when they have everything ironed out.

And when they have more wine.