A Lost Post: San Diego Trip

I discovered a post I had written and forgot about. It was from my September trip to San Diego. Here it is:

After the LHD and DDG and Fry's, we decided to go to the Stone Brewery in Escondido. We had an extremely hard time finding it. Google Maps tries to make you drive through a private street that is blocked off through traffic. Neither of the two people navigating for me could fathom taking any route other than that which Google commanded. I finally looked at the actual map. There are streets EVERYWHERE. It would have been relatively trivial to find an alternate route. Does anyone have any map-reading skills these days anymore that doesn't involve simply obeying directions?

So since it took us many tries to get there (after we found the actual street, for some reason my navigator told me to turn off it and we made a huge circle for some reason) we missed the last brewery tour of the day. There is a restaurant at Stone, though, so we decided to go there. Big mistake. Arbitrary parts of the restaurant are self-seating for beer and appetizers and other arbitrary parts are only if you're eating a full meal, and you must be sat by the hostess. So, there is an indoor bar, an indoor self-seating area, an indoor hostess-seated area, an outdoor bar, an outdoor self-seating area, an outdoor hostess-seated area, a self-seating counter around a fire pit in the middle of the dining area. There aren't any signs or boundaries or anything very obvious, or even subtle, denoting the different areas. A well-placed hostess stand would probably help alleviate some of the problem, but the hostess stand is OUTSIDE of the restaurant. What. The. Hell.

So, we sat ourselves in one of the verboten areas and patiently waited for a waitress and some menus. There were empty tables everywhere. Eventually the first waitress comes over. We said we'd like to order beers and have menus so we can decide if we're eating there. We were informed by the first waitress that this area was only if we're eating a full meal. If we wanted to just have a beer or order an appetizer or something, we'd have to go "over there." So, I asked again for menus because we were probably going to eat, but we'd like to see what they actually have. She again told us to sit "over there." (Mind you, this is before anyone really told us we shouldn't seat ourselves in this "section," except at certain tables/counters.) I said "so you want us to get up, go over there, order a beer, get a menu, decide what I want, come back here, sit down, and order food? Can we just have some menus?" She leaves in a huff, saying she'll get us menus. We never saw her again. A second waitress comes over and asks if we sat ourselves. We said of course. She was the first to inform us we were supposed to go outside the restaurant to the well-hidden hostess stand to be seated, and that this area was only for people dining. Really annoyed by all this, I said "I'd love to eat here but no one will give us any menus." She left, and I didn't expect to see her again. We decided since getting menus was too hard for them, we got up to go to one of the designated areas. But there were NO available tables in the area they kept telling us to go to. The second waitress brought us a menu to look at. A menu. As in 1. There were 4 of us. I said in front of the waitress, "Fuck this place. I'm not eating here." We eventually sat inside at one of the non-marked self-seating areas. I got a beer sampler. It was okay. My coworkers had a small order of tortilla chips for $4 and some $8 hummus. I still refused to eat. Fuck that place. I had dinner when we got back downtown.

Speaking of places that suck, earlier in the week I decided to try out the secret menu at In N Out. I ordered a hamburger Animal Style. I was asked if I wanted my fries animal style too. Sure. Why the hell not? NEVER EVER DO THIS. The Animal Style burger was okay. Just okay. The regular ones are better. Or how about not going to In N Out at all? That would be much better. The Animal Style fries is fries, cheese, grilled onions, and Thousand Island. About a liter of Thousand Island, that is. It is so fucking nasty. And their fries aren't all that great to begin with. Oh, and they charge $3.49 for the privilege of ruining your fries.