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More out of habit than interest, I nevertheless speedfinger walked through Open Table and realized RW doesn't start until Monday night so I snagged an 8:15 reservation for two at Sissy's Southern Kitchen. (I really hate that name. Saying "meet me at Sissy's at 8:15" is a sure fire way to lose all street cred in the world in which I dwell. Even thinking it to yourself is somehow diminishing. I tried referring to it as SSK but D was like "huh?" so I had to say it out loud and I could see all respect for me beginning to dim in his eyes so I started acting all macho and karate chopped a phone book in half and we were good again.)
We arrived at the spectacularly busy front door (neighboring Hibiscus was Deadsville, btw) and told one of the three perky door women that we had a reservation. She dimpled and asked us to "walk this way." (I muttered "if I could walk that way I wouldn't need the talcum powder" under my breath but this elicited no laughs as I have used that line approximately 4,013 times.) She then proceeded to seat us at a lovely table for two in the secondary dining room beside a party of 24. Seriously? They were on their third or twelfth round of drinks and the cacophony of great friends celebrating something really important was beyond deafening. We lasted about 16 seconds and I went back to the hostess stand and asked why we were being punished. She looked at me quizzically and I patiently explained that being seated adjacent to a private party wasn't very fun for those not invited to it. She was nice about it and apologized and then led us to a secluded table between the back door and the bathroom. Thank you.
Our server was sort of checked out, like she was thinking about a term paper that was due on Monday except this is Summer and she was older than most college students so I'm not sure. Don't get me wrong, she was okay, just absolutely disinterested in the moment, or us, or both. We ordered beverages because it seemed appropriate and we didn't want to hurt anyone's feelings. I had a beet salad with pecans and goat cheese, which was good, and D dawdled with the Sloppy Slaw, which was a ramekin of blue cheese dressing with three leaves of torn cabbage swimming inside it. Odd. Maybe it's a Southern thing. Or a Sissy thing. Snort.
Then an entire hour elapsed. It wasn't unpleasant, given the choice view of pairs of girls repairing to the ladies room to plump up their hair and pull down their tight miniskirts and jocular shirt guys high fiving their way into the one-seater with frilly doilies and cans of air freshener festooning it. I wanted to snatch a fried green tomato from the table next to me but the woman seated there had ESP or something and kept guarding it with her jungle red manicured talons and glaring at me beneath her finely arched brows. Her date was kind of menacing and I came THIS CLOSE to explaining to him that I just wanted to taste a little of her tomato until I realized that might result in my being on the business end of his meaty, violence-prone fist. The entire restaurant was full of large boisterous parties, all intent on breaking the sound barrier with shrill laughter and booming, hearty guffaws. I longed for comparatively quieter atmosphere of the American Airlines Center when the Dallas Mavericks annihilated the Miami Heat in the 2011 NBA Finals, Game 6.
At last our food arrived. I had their famous fried chicken, which was garbed in a thick brown burqa of
unseasoned coating and pressure-cooked to within an inch of its life. I peeled off the crunchy, greasy outer layers and managed to eke out a few forkfuls of nicely seasoned poultry. The chicken came with 2 gallons of mashed potatoes and one of those stainless steel gravy boats like you see at Denny's. I had a little and asked for the rest to be Fedexed to the starving children in Africa. Our server noted the request with no outward sign or acknowledgement of my flat out hilarious repartee. D had the chicken-fried flat iron steak, which for some reason he thought was chicken but I corrected him twice and he was annoyed but I ended up being right, as usual. He ate half of it and had the rest wrapped up for our pups' lunch. Too bad it is still in his trunk and it is 11:45 the next day and 114 degrees in the shade.The place was absolutely jammed and got even more so as I payed our just north of $60 tab, which is very low on the Dallas continuum of restaurant going. Perhaps there is a correlation between cheap prices and bustling crowds, I don't know. But as I left the restaurant and awaited the valet parker, I wondered to myself in a wry, Carrie Bradshaw voice, if Sissy's Southern Kitchen wouldn't be more appropriately named Jim Bob's Grub.
