Downtown Dinners Should Come on Real Plates

Ismael and I rarely go out on dates….so rarely that you could almost call it NEVER.

Saturday we were invited to see the play of a former student of mine.  The stars lined up just right.  I convinced Ismael to go.  My sister agreed to watch Adam OVER!NIGHT!   And that was left to do was to find a place to eat dinner.

The theater was downtown Indianapolis on Massachusetts Avenue.  Mass Ave is home to our “cultural” district which is a nice way to say art studios, pricey restaurants, uppity lounges, odd stores, and independent theaters.

It’s a fun place! Especially if you have extra money to blow.  Since we don’t, finding a dinner location was slightly challenging.

I checked out a few places, then happened upon the site for YATS.   PERFECT.  And by perfect, I mean cheap.

The problem was that I didn’t really make a careful note of the address….600 something Mass Ave seemed perfectly reasonable to me.  Trouble is that when you have already parked the car on a very crowded street, 600 something becomes a less than perfect suggestion of where we should walk next to find the place.

In order to prevent a total meltdown of the one and only perfect date night in this quarter, I called information, obtained the number, and waited *patiently* while I was connected.

Me:  “Umm hi…where are you located?”

YATS employee of the month:  “Where are YOOOUUUUUU located?”

Fabulous.

After we ascertained that yes we were both located on Mass Ave, he got us headed in the right direction, and in no time we were face to face with our own personal GPS.

He was about 18, curly haired, t-shirted, and leaning on the counter chewing on a toothpick.

I am rarely overdressed for any event, but I sure was here.  I think we could have walked into the restaurant in our underwear and tattered bathrobes and he would have said, “huh…cool….whatcha wanna eat?”

The food is New Orleans’ Creole and not bad… if eating on styrofoam is your idea of a “great night out.”

I will spare you the details of what the bathroom looked like.  Let’s just say that toothpick boy needs to get off the counter and go pick some toilet paper off the floor.

Next time, I think maybe we’ll eat at home before we go downtown on our budget.   At least I use real plates here!

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