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| - In Greek myth, the sirens are alluringly gorgeous women who leer at and taunt passing sailors from the rocks of their islands, only to watch them die as their ships crash against the shores.
They could just as easily be servers from the alluring-looking Pickle Barrel near Dundas Square.
Entering from the street, my dinner partner and I first made the mistake of going down the escalator to the lower dining area, where we were forced to make our own way through the labyrinthine arrangement to locate the greeting area all the way in the back. Would it be so difficult to set up a station at, you know, the base of the escalator?
Wow. That's a huge menu. Is that going to mean that this place doesn't have a specialty or two that it can really do well? Seems so.
My dirty martini tasted more like something from a medicine cabinet than olive. Waited far too long for the second one (I was hoping for the best), and the server simply left the previous, dirty glass on our table. Throughout our entire meal.
My partner's lobster ravioli looked like it had been tossed together with a slingshot. My salmon penne had a nice zip to it, but the penne oozed with the grease that meandered in the bottom of the ridiculous rectangle serving dish. The salmon was a mush. Each of us having pasta dishes, at no time were we offered parmesan.
Oh, look. Now I have two, yup, two dirty ex-martini glasses on our table.
When time for coffee came, our server gushed over how pleased he was to be making a fresh pot, and when it arrived, his beaming and praise for the coffee was endless. He fawned over me as I fixed milk and sugar in my cup. Oh, yes, he was proud of that coffee. Proud and happy and gushy and fawning, yes. Because, isn't it great coffee? Happy to serve you your coffee, sir. Lovely coffee.
He reminded me of my mother, and of all those times in my childhood when she would tell me, "If you put as much energy into that crap you're fucking around with as you should for your grades, you'd actually get something done, kid."
Yeah. Maybe Pickle Barrel coulda listened to her too.
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