Fuck You, Marie!

Today Clayton & I decided to hit up Marie Callender's for chicken pot pies. I mean, the frozen ones are fucking delicious, so I'm thinking the real deal is going to be the shit. With this thought in our minds, we walked down the street to Marie's as Clayton told me how horrible Seven Pounds was.

We walk in & it's absolutely freezing inside, which makes me wish I had thought to bring my jacket. The hostess interrupts our conversation - "I'll be right with you" - we nod - then she says "how many?" and "come right this way". This irritated me as we were in the middle of a conversation and she acted as though she was too busy and we would have to wait and then proceeded to just keep talking brashly in a this obtrusive way. Had she simply started with "how many" we wouldn't have been prompted to expect a wait and therefore found her intrusion annoying. Yes. I know. I'm a master at finding things to complain about. It's a gift.

We're seated in a booth and the waitress quickly comes over. I was pleased to discover that they did in fact have seltzer & lemon, promptly ordering my beverage. The waitress brings our drinks & we're looking over the menu. I wavered for a moment once I had perused the options, 'cause hot damn if that carnitas philly sandwich didn't sound amazing, but we were on a mission. A pot pie mission. A mission that can't just be abandoned, relinquished in a futile hope for some tasty pork product covered in cheese with avocados on top. So we soldiered on.

There are daily specials that come with soup/salad & a slice of pie for 10.99. Apparently yesterday was chicken pot pie day, but today is portabello chicken, which sounds good, but again I refuse to be waylaid by some fancy feast flaunting its delicious sauces. I'mma get me a god damned pot pie!

I find the pot pie on the menu & it comes with absolutely nothing AND it's $12.49. Again, I looked at the carnitas philly sandwich with a flash of yearning, but alas I aimed my focus beams upon the pot pie & ordered it with a furor reserved for the fuhrer. She asked if I wanted a salad or soup, but it would be an additional $2.00 and I was already spending more than I wanted to on lunch, so I passed. I would later regret this for about 10 minutes as I watched Clayton eat his salad and my stomach grumbled, but fortunately the pot pies came out very quickly, which is rare for pot pie at a restaurant....even at home a frozen one takes a good 40-60 minutes to cook.

I quickly dig in and am initially quite pleased with my selection. The crust is fluffy & flaky and everything seems to be going well until I get about 10 bites in and then every bite after that seems to be a little bit saltier than the previous bite. Further, I make the horrifying discovery that there is in fact no crust on the bottom - simply a meager layer of crust atop & NO deliciously-saturated-with-pot-pie-filling-juiciness bottom crust. No pot pie could ever be a true pot pie without said bottom crust. The only time I come close to making an exception is the awesome seafood bisque at The Fireside, which has the raddest delicate, fluffy, pastry crust on top of it - soooo good! However, it is in no way claiming to be a pot pie, but I digress.

By the time I'm half way through the crust I am no longer enjoying the aforementioned pie. It's just salty & bland. Perhaps if there had been more crust, it would've been saved, but I'm not even sure that that would've done the trick. The waitress comes by & asks us if we would like dessert & I think, fuck it - it's Marie Callender's, they've got to have good pies. I ask the waitress to bring the dessert menu. She brings the menu, but it has no prices. I ask how much they are by the slice and she hems and haws for quite a while, finally throwing out anywhere from $3 to 4.39. Clayton doesn't really want pie, but I ask if he'll split a slice with me and he agrees. Coconut cream? Again, he agrees and she goes off to fetch us our pie.

The tasty coconut cream pie is quickly brought to the table. It's good. The crust is flaky - it's a bit overwhelmingly sweet, but that's usually what happens for me once I'm about halfway through a slice of pie, it almost makes me nauseous, but I enjoy it up until that point. The waitress brings the bill, which is all together. We specifically requested separate checks at the beginning of the meal, so it was slightly annoying, but no big deal - we'll just ask her to split it when she comes back. However, she keeps coming back & attending to the guests near us without finding out if we need anything. It ends up taking a good 10-15 minutes to get her to fix the check.

Finally, she comes back with the split checks and leaves us to hunt down our cards. This is when I discover that the pie was $4.39, even though an entire pie would only cost $6.99. Ugh. Seriously? I just spend $18.19, not including tip for a seriously disappointing meal? I could've gone to The Yard House and had really tasty food and soaked up some douche baggery for the same price, but instead I spent it eating mediocre food surrounded by senior citizens. Ultimately, that is why I say, "Fuck you, Marie. Thanks for nothing. Way to take my money and leave me feeling dissatisfied and slightly nauseous."

Now, to break it down utilizing the patented Luxury Lunches rating system: shitburgers. Everything that sucks about an establishment gets a kind of demerit for said suckiness. For instance on this occasion:

Cold restaurant - 1 shitburger
Annoying host - 1 shitburger
$12.49 for a pot pie without sides - 3 shitburgers
No crust on the pot pie - 2 shitburgers
Salty as fuck - 2 shitburgers
$4.39 for one lousy slice of pie - 2 shitburgers
Weirdly brash & annoying waitress - 1 shitburgers
Not splitting the check - 1 shitburger
Taking forever to bring the check - 1 shitburgers

Grand total for Marie Callender's: 14 shitburgers