What’s on tap?

We were on our way home to Florida from Dallas after a wonderful visit with my son and his family. Though we usually stopped for the night in Jackson, MS, we decided to press on a little further to Hattiesburg, for a lighter second day of travel. We dropped off our stuff at hotel and headed out to find a place to eat.

It, was, however, Super Bowl Sunday. Might be a little crowded, but we weren’t in a hurry, just hungry. Yelp helped us find a couple of places worth trying. The first, a little Mexican place had a sign on the door, “Closed for the Super Bowl.” Interesting. I thought this night was pretty important for the restaurant business.

We headed across the street to our second choice, O’Charley’s Restaurant and Bar. The parking lot wasn’t crowded here either. But the lights were on, so we headed in. The hostess asked if we wanted to to sit at the bar. That was the only TV with the game on. We weren’t there to watch, so we just took a booth in a quiet section.

As we looked over the menu, a very nice waitress stopped and asked if we would like to start with some drinks. Absolutely. I asked, “What do you have on tap?” “Hold on,” she said, “I’ll go check.” A few minutes later she came back to let me know, “We don’t have any draft beer.” Really? At a bar? OK, I pointed to one of the bottled beers on their list and said, “How about one of those?” “And a glass of red wine for me,” my wife added. “Great,” our server replied and headed off.

A few minutes later, a man wearing a manager name tag told us they didn’t have any of the beer I had ordered. So I asked, “OK, what do you have?” He said, “I’m not sure, I’ll have to go and check.” Interesting. I guess that’s why they weren’t all that crowded on what should have been a busy night.

I think I ended up with a Corona. To be fair, the food was pretty good and we enjoyed a quiet place to rest and eat. And our server did tell us that she usually worked take out rather than table service, so she was a little out of the loop. I thought all hands would be on deck that night. But I’m not in the food biz.