Free Food & Drink @ Crunchytown's Mellow Mushroom

K.C. and her husband Solar joined me for a recent trip to Asheville, my favorite beautiful town. K.C. was hankering for pizza, so we went to Asheville's Mellow Mushroom.

It took a while to get a table, and then even after getting our table we hadn't received our menus or otherwise talked with a waiter for a good 15 minutes. So I eventually hailed a waiter, and a stout bald guy covered with tattoos came to help us. The waiter seemed genuinely apologetic for the delay, and had clearly taken it upon himself to make our remaining experience at the Mellow Mushroom a wonderful one. "I'm so sorry for the wait... I'll put your food order in as a rush order, and we'll it out to you as soon as possible!" In the meantime, I ordered the local Pisgah Seasonal beer, K.C. ordered a hard cider, and Solar a water.

A couple minutes later, the waiter came back with a Pisgah Pale, which I noted was not the beer I ordered. This might not have been such a big deal if I liked pale ales, but generally I don't. "Oh my gosh..." he sighed, apparently dismayed with himself, "Well, you can keep that one, and I'll bring the Seasonal right out." Soon I was stocked with two full beers (both were pretty good).

I get started on my complimentary beers and salad. With or without utensils...

The waiter then came back unannounced with a beautiful Greek salad, which he explained was complimentary for all the delays. This unexpected gesture was very nice of him, but after he left, I discovered that we had been left with a new dilemma, which I explained to K.C.:

"As I see it, we now have to make one of two choices, neither of them good. One, we can let the waiter know that he forgot to bring us utensils, which will probably make him feel really bad. Or two, we can just eat the salad without the utensils, and then ask for utensils when the main food comes out, and hope that he doesn't realize that we just ate our appetizer without utensils, which runs the risk of possibly making him feel REALLY bad."

In the end, we chose the first option, and were met with the predictable unpleasant wave of apologies... Poor guy...