Thursday, November 15 – St. Augustine:

            So last night, as the weather was not conducive to grilling salmon outside, Bob suggested we go up to the restaurant next to this marina for the happy hour special.  And you all know me – he didn’t have to twist my arm.  Although, I did offer to cook the salmon inside, but, of course, I reminded him that the salmon would leave a fishy odor in the boat for days!  

            So, we don our foul weather gear and head over to the restaurant whose name I can’t remember.  The restaurant is not listed in any of the guides we picked up in the marina office, and I wonder if that’s a bad sign.  It is damp and windy, not cold, but not warm either. 

            There are colorful lights adorning the place, and it looks rather warm and inviting on this drizzly night.  We walk up the steps to the entrance, and, there seems to be a happy crowd outside on the porch laughing and having a good time having drinks and whatever else.  So we enter the restaurant, and notice that it’s sort of small, there seem to be a couple of singers, and it’s LOUD, and the whole place is full of cigarette smoke (not to disparage anyone who smokes who is reading this, but if you don’t smoke, it sort of bothers your head after awhile).  Well, we think we can make the best of it.  We tell the waitress, hostess, or bar person, whatever she is (and she looks like she’s about 13), that we’d like a table for two, and then she says,

            “Oh, I’m so sorry”, she screams,  “but it’s karaoke night, and we are completely booked – no tables inside at all!”
            Well, you should have seen Bob’s face.  When he realized he couldn’t sit inside and listen to the karaoke, he was crestfallen.  He looked like a puppy that had been scolded for tearing up the newspaper or chewing on the slippers.  (he really looked like the old dog who wanted to run away as fast and as far as he could.)  The waitress tells us we can sit outside though.  So we look at each other, and since it’s getting a little late, and it’s dark and rainy, we decide we don’t have too many options at this point (well I guess we could have been more ingenious, but we were too tired to find a taxi, etc.) and we opt to sit outside.

            So, outside isn’t too bad – we find a corner picnic table on the water side away from all the other people who were having a great time but not so great yet as to be able to sing along with the karaoke machine.  The porch is wrapped up with those heavy plastic curtains, so the wind is not blowing on us directly.  The waiter guy brings us menus, and we remind him that we are here by boat and the marina has given us a coupon for the happy hour specials.  He says, “That’s cool.”  It is really dark out here though, but Bob has thoughtfully brought along a flashlight so we can see the menu and our surroundings.  That really might not have been a good idea.  We are already prepared to order wings and beer, but I take a look to see if there is anything else we might be interested in trying.  And whaddya know, they have alligator tail as an appetizer!  So when the waiter guy comes back, I tell him we’d like an order of those (c’mon, you have to experience new things when you are on an adventure), but he tells me that they are out of them.

            It seems that due to the new TV show, “Swamp Men”, alligator has become one of the new culinary fads in the country, and this restaurant in particular can’t keep enough of it to satisfy all the guests.  This is pretty interesting because Swamp Men is one of the new reality TV shows that we can actually get down here – I don’t know why this is on the approval list of the FCC, and not “60 Minutes”, but there you go.  I guess we’ll have to check it out.

            So instead of alligator tail, we decide to compliment our wings with steak tips (bad idea).  We get a beer and wait for dinner!  So the wings come.  I like wings – really, and I thought these were pretty good – although we ordered “mild” because Bob doesn’t really care for “hot” stuff, but these definitely had more of a kick to them than Bob liked.  I don’t know what wings come swimming in, but these were about to drown – still, I thought they weren’t too bad.  The steak tips come, and they should have been called “grizzle tips”.  We should have known better.

            So, we are eating and drinking (the best part), and this guy comes out of the inner sanctum, stands over in the corner, lights up a cigarette, and then strikes up a conversation with us.  Now, I’m going to try and emulate this, but you have to use your best slurred voice.

            “Hey, they should have some more light out here, dontcha think?”

            I say, “Yeah, that would be nice.”

            He says, “Even if it’s jus a candle…”

            I say, “Yeah, but we brought a flashlight.”

            He says, “Yeah, but they should have a candle.”  I’m thinking he would burn the place down….”

            Then he says, “Hey, you guys gonna go in an sing karaoke…?”

            I say, “No, they would probably kick us out if we tried to sing.”

            He says, “No, no, you guys should go in and sing karaoke.” Ha, ha, ha, ha.

            I say, “No, the waitress told us there were no tables left inside, and I’m telling you we would be kicked out.”

            And he says, “No…you guys can have my table.  I’ll go tell the wairress…”

            YIKES!  Then he disappeared, never to be seen again, thank heaven.

            Along about this time (we can see the singers inside), an “older” woman gets up in front of the audience and starts to sing her rendition of “I Got You Babe.”  I think I saw a tear in Bob’s eye.  I knew he really wanted to go in there and have a go at the karaoke machine, but inhibitions held him back.  He really needs to learn to let go once in a while.  Come on…can’t you picture it?  Bob belting out “Born in the USA!”  Oh well, I tried to encourage him.

            So we finish the wings, and Bob actually looks at the menu to see if they have ice cream, and I say, “Uh uh, we gotta get outta here - we have cookies and milk at “home”.  Oh yeah, that would be the boat, of course!  Bob, thankfully, agreed - we get the check and leave to the strains of someone belting out “Proud Mary.”

            One last interesting tid bit about this place.  The entrance into the restaurant is right beside, and I mean a few feet, what looks like a public boat ramp.  If the tide was high, I think you would have to walk through the water to get up the stairs to the restaurant.  So if by some small chance, you had too much to drink and weren’t watching, or couldn’t watch where you were going when you left, you could wind up in the water.  Maybe this was the restaurant’s way of sobering you up for the drive home.  It actually gave a new meaning to the word, “dive”! (Yeah, I know, aarrgghh)

            I think I have chewed your ear off enough about this place and our first experience here.  More on St. Augustine later…