Darren's most embarrassing restaurant moment
Just when you thought it was safe to walk into a Mike's Kitchen...Darren Maule recounts his response to a hilarious mishap. Share your embarrassing restaurant story with the Breakfast Stack here.
On the Breakfast Stack this week we were talking about inappropriate responses to mishaps in public.
Yes - you guessed it - I responded inappropriately to my brother's rather colourful mishap.
My older brother and I were considered, by polite company, to be naughty.
We weren't really...sure we were rambunctious, but as there were five brothers all competing for attention, you can hardly blame the two of us!
That said, when things went awry - as they did with monotonous regularity - perhaps we were guilty of not being as contrite as is, supposedly, socially acceptable.
One such instance was when my brother and I went to have a meal at Mike's Kitchen (back in the day) before a movie. Nothing unusual about this!
My brother asked the waitress to please bring some tomato sauce for his french fries. Again, nothing unusual here. What the waitress didn't know was that my brother had a habit of shaking the tomato sauce bottle vigorously.
Just imagine someone is being bitten on the hand by a puff adder and imagine how that person would try and shake the offending reptile off...this was the amount of energy Brett would expend in the shaking process.
What Brett didn't know was that this decidedly conscientious waitress considered it a part of her duties to loosen the cap of the bottle for the convenience of the customer.
Now, essentially, this should be no cause for concern but obviously when you put this waitress, with her lid releasing tendencies together with my brother and his bottle whipping tendencies, it
was a definite recipe for disaster. Mike's Kitchen on a summer afternoon was about to find this out.
Picture this: Brett violently shook the full-to-the-brim bottle of tomato sauce (with the lid dutifully loosened by the waitress) whereupon the contents of the bottle evacuate their glass container and now - instead of making the heap of french fries edible - the patrons at the tables all around us were now elegantly draped in great gloops of vermillion liquid.
My brother had single handedly managed to update the colour of various outfits around the room and yet not a single drop of the offending condiment had managed to find itself onto my brother, me or even the intended french fries!
The scenario which had just played out coupled with the complete conviction etched onto the assaulted patron's faces that my brother had planned and executed this heinous crime on purpose was indeed the cause of me responding inappropriately to my brother's, very public, mishap.
I didn't think I could but I certainly LMAO that day. In fact I had to spend five minutes looking for it under the table...it was gone!!! :)
As I tried to compose myself and my brother was preparing to launch into a very public apology, we looked at each other and we just knew that neither of these actions were going to be successful.
So, in a moment of mental telepathy that is only shared by close siblings, we resolved that this was a lose-lose situation and that we should hastily remove ourselves from the situation before the mob lynched us!
I have often wondered what happened in that restaurant after our swift exit.Perhaps if we had stayed we may have been able to appease the affected, and irate, diners - who knows.
What I do know for sure is that my brother and I share a memory that always brings a smile to my face when I think about it. And in addition, this story is one of the most requested at the now very occasional family functions.
- DSM
What's your most embarrassing moment in a restaurant? Share your story in the comments' section below or email [email protected]. Your story might end up on-air on The Breakfast Stack!