Me of Little Faith

W. Kamau Bell

"You didn't die. That is five stars. Some of y'all are taking this Yelp thing too seriously."  W. Kamau Bell was playing for laughs and it was funny as he mocked both the inconsistencies in reviews as well as the incessant nit-picking. I agree in part, I've read enough reviews that can’t sing the praises of the chef more, or the friendly staff, or the décor, only to ream a place with two stars because the person next to them brought their child or the soap in the bathroom smelled funny. 

Still, I pretty much fall in the other camp. I might be a nitpicker. In fact, part of the reason I’ve had such long pauses between postings lately has nothing to do with the volume of eating out I do…it hasn’t really changed…instead it has more to do with my own disdain with my winging. It has been so long since I’ve been blown away by a place that I’m tired of writing about what I don’t like.

Price and mediocrity have lately had an inverse relationship. The pricier it is the more expensive which in turn makes it less delicious because I need it to be pretty darn amazing if it is also going to price me out of rent and gas money. 

And there is the rub here in the Bay, everything is so darn expensive. My newest pursuit is the hole in the wall. Or, as I want to refer to a hidden gem, a whole in the wall. I want it to be the whole shebang. I want delicious and affordable and clean. Ad it can be awkward and the service can be a little off and everything doesn’t have to make me melt but I don’t want to walk away feeling like a chump. Like a stood in line to see the emperor’s new clothes and the bum was stark naked and the image burned into my retinas like a less glorious sun.

This desire to find a whole spot led me to Lois the Pie Queen. 

Because I’ve read a fair number of yelp reviews I know better than to take any restaurant at star value. Up until the last few weeks I used it as a way to identify places I might want to try and to weed out places that were legitimately awful. To do that, I seldom read the rave reviews, instead I went for the negative ones. Were people winging about how their waiter didn’t smile and ask them about their day or that they had 15 shrimp and they counted the shrimp on the plate of the person in front of them and that person had 16? If those were the complaints I used to assume the high ranking was properly earned and increased my expectations. 

No longer.

Lois has sky high ratings and the folks complaining were irritated by things like slow service or banana pudding that doesn’t taste like it does down south (and I get it because I know what southern banana pudding tastes like but I also know I’m out west so…I put such expectations away). And so Karma and I wandered over, determined as always, to find a breakfast spot we can call our own.

The place is old- we knew that going in. it is a kind of institution and people talk about it a little like it is church. There was a mixed crowd: tattooed hipsters, a table of older white folks, a bunch of black ones.  I exchanged smiles with the table behind us as I stood so the couple leaving could ease the chair out for their departure. It was that kind of spot and since everyone was smiling I was happy to go with it. Maybe this would be like Jacques-imo’s  in New Orleans (that place is always worth the wait and the squeezed in tables, in fact part of the familial feeling I have when I’m there is because everyone is squeezed in tight like old friends…but I digress).

Karma and I studied the menu. She changed her mind every 30 seconds and continued to ask me what I was getting long after I’d decided. And then by her 7^th choice I was inspired to change. We came up with a tandem ordering plan and as the waiter smiled down on us with the most beautiful and heartfelt smile and the most gracious patience I’ve seen in a while, she changed her mind again – causing me to change mine. Orders sorted we exchanged looks as our waiter departed.

“$12 for a ham and cheese omelet?!”

Karma was incredulous and I had to laugh because the same thought had crossed my mind. I had already wiped something black and sticky from the grimy wall are table was nestled against. It didn’t look like it was a new addition, left over from the patrons before us, it looked more like something that had set up residence and was surprised to be removed.

Still, we were optimistic. Hundreds of yelpers couldn’t be wrong, right? Not to mention this place has been around for years.

When our food finally arrived we weren’t blown away but we weren’t pissed. I had an egg, a pancake, some bacon, and hashbrowns. Karma had scrambled eggs and corned beef hash plus a biscuit on the side. I gave her some of my hashbrowns but demurred on one of her biscuits. They were dense and heavy and oddly sweet. While I’m happy to drench my biscuits in syrup or jam I have no desire to have them sweet before I dress them. Karma took a couple of bites of one biscuit and the other one lay untouched.

The pancake was ok. Nothing sublime but nothing horrible. The eggs, were indeed scrambled hard as I’d asked, so hard in fact, they were brown. Meanwhile, Karma shrugged when I asked her about her food. She wasn’t thrilled but it wasn’t going to be a $25 meal for either of us so we weren’t too put out…until…

Karma chewed funny for a moment and then brought her finger to her lips and pulled out a hair.

I almost gagged. 

For as much hair as I have, the thought of chewing and potentially swallowing someone else’s hair grosses me out- always has. I stopped chewing and she shook her head and assured me it was probably hers. We continued eating, looking around, giving the side eye to a group of hipsters that were seated next to us and bumped our table repeatedly without any understanding of the space they were occupying/terrorizing. Feeling the heat from Karma’s glare and probably hearing her much louder than a whisper complaint of their obliviousness, they moved to another table.

A few moments later, and Karma’s lips screwed up again, and again she pulled out a hair.

That was enough for us. She’d ordered another cup of coffee that never came and at that point we were too over Lois to be bothered. We settled our bill, tipped our pleasant waitress and closed the door on Lois for good; we won’t be going back and I’ve given up on yelp completely.