ciao

Sweet Tomatoes! My trip to Souplantation.

If you haven’t yet had the pleasure of dining at the bountiful harvest that is Souplantation, take it from me, you ain’t missing nothing!  So after beach cruising for 20 miles up to Marina Del Rey and back again this past Sunday, when dinner time rolled around my rommie and myself were beat and no one wanted to cook- but being that we pigged out at lunch on cheeseburgers / french fries / ice cream cones, we decided that healthy was the name of the game for dinner.  So when the options came down to pizza and wings or take-out Thai, the natural choice was to head on over to Souplantation.

For those of you not blessed to be from fabulous Southern California, Souplantation (also known as Sweet Tomatoes east of the Rockies) is a chain of salad bar restaurants that amounts to nothing more then the Old Country Buffet sans entrees.  The offerings consist of a salad bar that you may visit once (yes, thats right, only once), and pasta, soup, and bread stations that you may frequent as much as you can stuff your face.  As you enter Souplantation you are directed immediately into the salad line, which is reminiscent of the Great Depression bread lines.  The trip was slow through the salad line, it took us about 15 minutes to get from one end to the other, and the choices aren’t much different then what you’d find at the Von’s salad bar (or ShopRite for those of you in New Jersey).  The best part of the salad line was the plastic cups filled with tiny bits of chicken, marked $1.25!  Cheryl had visited a Sweet Tomatoes in Chicagoland once and warned me not to take this chicken, as you can scoop your own chicken out of the soup pot for free!  I let Gorry in on the tip and we moved along.  After you create your salad you get to a cashier and have the honor of paying $12.86 for your salad and a bottomless self-serve bev.

The fun was just getting started!  Now that we made our salads, paid, and were all ready to eat, the line continued on…  You have to continue to wait in line for a table.  So as I looked around, I noticed others in the line began to eat their salads, not even bothering to wait to get seated.  I turned to my roomie ,Gorry, and I saw that he was sticking his fork into his salad dish!  Monkey see-Monkey do.  I was appalled, and at that moment, I began to feel like we were cattle.  So I told Tim to put the fork down and start acting like a civilized human being.  I have to admit though, I was tempted on occasion to begin to eat my salad too.

Once we were finally seated, 15 minutes later, we tried about 4 different soups each, some pasta, and lots of bread since these were all all-you-can-eat options.  About 10 minutes into eating I realized that my stomach was hurting like I just ate at the $2.99 Circus-Circus buffet.  But i kept on eating nonetheless.  My worst nightmare had come true- I hate buffets and here I was eating in one!  And not even a good one…  one that you can only get salad once, load up on unlimited bread and pasta, and eat zero entrees!

The funny thing about Souplantation is that people in So Cal seem to love it there.  I’ve heard co-workers brag about how great it is, and I heard people in the restaurant (if you even want to call it that) talking about how they’ve been eating there for 20+ years!  People, wake up!  Take yourself to the Hometown Buffet across the street because its the same damn crap plus entrees for less money.

On the drive home, me and Gorry discussed that our trip to Souplantation would have been successful had we deployed basic buffet tactics: skip the fillers - go right for the high value items (in this case, the chicken in the soup and lettuce).  Oh well, there’s always next time.  Ciao, from Souplantation, my new favorite restaurant.

Let's fly UNITED FIRST

With my new ticket in hand, and still in shock, I walked down the jetway to board the plane.  So the coolest thing about flying in first class: making a left when you get on the plane, not a right!  Then, as soon as you get to your seat the service begins.  “May I take your coat?”  “Would you like some water or Orange Juice?”

The service is really what sets First Class apart, because the seat isn’t all that.  In fact, I would prefer the United Economy Plus seating to the First Class seat, because it seems as if there is more legroom, and when the people in front of you recline they aren’t laying in your lap.  There are a few other nuances that make the seat not that great, but whatever - its still pretty fly to be sitting in First Class.

So back to the great service.  After I turned down their offer for water or orange juice, the flight attendant took my empty water bottle from me told me she’d refill it with fresh bottled water.  I’ve never had that happen before!  Then once we took off they came and greeted me by name, put a tablecloth on my tray table, and asked if I would like a hot or cold breakfast.  Hot, obviously!  I needed to milk this for all that it was worth.  Then about 5 minutes later my breakfast arrived on a tray with glass dishes and real silverware!  The breakfast was a fruit dish with grapes, honeydew, and oranges, a cheese omelet, ham, sausage, and breakfast potatoes.  I ordered a Bloody Mary with my breakfast, and it came in a cocktail glass!  Then they walked around with the now extinct Biscoff cookies (previously handed out in economy, now replaced with more “choices” of $3 chips or pretzels), and warm croissants.

By the end of my meal I was feeling the Bloody Mary, and the movie “City of Ember” was about as good as the title suggests, so I pulled out my ‘Nap’ pillow and proceeded to pass out.  I woke up as we were beginning our descent into San Fran.  I saw the flight attendants collecting glasses when I woke up, so if there was any other service or snacks I missed it, but I don’t really mind because I did sleep the entire way there.

United First is great, but I don’t know why this experience cannot be duplicated in the Economy cabin.  This is what flying was like the first time I got on a plane when I was 5 and went to Disney World.  In fact, the food then was probably better then my First Class meal today.  If people have to pay for their meals now, make them pay, but make it a quality product and serve it with a smile.  And what does some friendliness and respect cost the airline anyway?  They really need to start treating everyone like they are First Class, and that is something United should add to it’s “Back to Basics” plan.  Ciao, from my First Class seat.

Anthony Bucca's "A Series of Unfortunate Events"

Thanks to my Premier Executive status (props to Cheryl), and a series of unfortunate events, I was able to score an upgrade to United First on my trip back to Cali this past weekend. 

So it all started with my cell phone alarm waking me up at 4am, after just 3 hours of sleep.  Forget that, I hit my snooze button at least 3 times, which caused me to leave about 20 minutes late for the airport.  After some drama from my parents about our lateness, and a 90+ mile per hour trip up the NJ Turnpike in the Passat wagen, I arrived at Newark Liberty with 50 minutes to spare.  Perfect, being that I have Premier Executive status on United and I will be able to check-in in about 2 minutes and then fly through security and into my comfy Economy Plus seat.  Or, not.  The line to check in stretched all the way back to Trenton, and the Premier line wasn’t that much shorter.  To make matters worse, all the high maintenance “Premiers” were taking about 5 times longer then normal passengers, with their 50,000+ special requests.  So after about 20 minutes of standing in a line that moved no where, an agent started calling out for passengers who were traveling on Flight 91 to San Fran.  I quickly raised my hand and then was escorted over to a self service check in kiosk.  This was much faster, and friendlier, then dealing with any Newark NJ United employee.

With 30 minutes left till departure time, I was hoping to fly through the security line, purchase some reading materials and a bev, and board my flight early.  But I was in store for another surprise.  When I arrived at the security check I saw that the line was worse then check-in!  A note to United: You should remove the Premier security line at Newark being that it dumps you directly into the normal security line (which happens to be the ‘real’ line) as soon as your ID is checked.  It may even tack on time to have your credentials checked to enter the premier line only to be put right back into the normal line in about 30 seconds.  So after a 25 minute wait, taking off 1/2 my clothes, emptying my luggage, and then putting everything back together again, I was ready to get on the plane.  And I had no choice since it was due to leave in 5 minutes.

Surprise, surprise, the line to get on the plane is also long.  By this time they are boarding the regular passengers in seating area 3.  As I approached the ticket stand, I heard the two agents going through a list of names of people to upgrade.  I handed the one agent my ticket to scan, and he looked at it, handed it to the other agent, and said “how about him?”  So I started to get excited…  And then he said it, “were moving you to First, we are short a seat and you have Premier status.”  Yes, finally, something is going right!  So he tore up my boarding pass and handed me a new ticket.  My series of unfortunate events caused me to be standing in the right place at the right time, and so history was written.