Gag Me with a Spoon

For the BF's birthday today, we went to Gasho Hibachi Steak House on Route 32. We've passed by it several times, and every time we go by, it looks so nice that we want to eat there, and we figured that since his dad was going to pay for his birthday dinner, we'd finally treat ourselves.

So, we go in. It's a beautiful place, by the way. We're seated within about ten minutes. It's a bunch of community tables with cook tops so the chef can cook your dinner right in front of you. We've got one of these tables to ourselves. We order our food.

So far, so good. The chefs at the other tables are a bit obnoxious, and the bottles of beer that the neighboring men are consuming are the size of half-gallon milk jugs, so they're pretty rowdy. Our appetizers come. Ew. Seriously, ew. Salty, sparse, just...ew.

Then, about fifteen minutes later, our chef comes up. "How you dooooinnnn'?" he asks, Joey-style. The three of us just look at him.

He starts cooking, and food goes flying in every direction. I have tilapia, BF has filet mignon and his father has chicken. Both the men have shrimp. Firstly, I notice the shrimp is being cooked WITHOUT BEING DEVEINED. Do you know what the vein is? It's the shrimp's digestive tract. That brown stuff? Shrimp poo. POO! They cooked us poo.

Then the chef did BF's filet mignon. Cooked it ok, I guess. Then, proceeded to chop it into bite-sized pieces. Who, in their right mind, chops up filet mignon? The chicken got a similar treatment, and was quite dry. It was all dowsed in soy sauce. Too salty. My fish...well...it was fish. What can I say. The vegetables were overcooked, the rice was oddly nutty. The diet coke was delicious, though.

It was the first dinner restaurant we ever went to where BF didn't order dessert. That in and of itself testifies to the utter ickiness of this particular establishment.

The best part of the whole experience, though, was an older man who was there for his birthday with his family. The wait staff brought out a quarter of a pineapple, cut lengthwise into a wedge, put a sparkler in it, and proceeded to smack everyone in the party on the head with a toy plastic mallet that squeaked with every smack. It was surreal.

It was, all in all, the WORST MEAL EVER. I've had better meals at trucker stops in the middle of Pennsylvania.