Post #200159 by Satan's Sin on Sat, Nov 26, 2005 6:09 PM

Just got back from business in Orlando, where a gracious and well-meaning client decided to celebrate a job well done by taking me and my colleagues to a no-holds-barred din-din at … Jimmy Buffet’s Margaritaville.

Margaritaville is at Universal City Walk, which is some sort of weird combination of half-rides and half-stores, full of sour young men prowling the grounds like watchful soldiers on combat patrol and raucous young women in the coarsest state of drunkenness, complete with shrieks of delight at their comrades’ falling-down antics.

I thought Margaritaville would be a refuge from the noise but no, it was even louder inside this … well, I don’t know if the word “restaurant” applies. It was more like a gigantic pin-ball machine and we poor humans the pummeled and knocked-about orbs.

The din was incredible. Thundering voices, braying hillbilly laughs, police whistles, popping balloons, televised sports events, and underneath it all, the faint but constant strains of one Jimmy Buffet standard after another.

Every square inch, floor to ceiling, was covered with some doo-dad or gimgrack, be it a float plane or a surfboard or an alligator’s head or brightly-flashing lights. As if the interior decorator came from the three-ring circus school of design, and lived in dread that the customer’s eye might find rest and relaxation during the course of “dinner.”

But worst of all were these – well, I don’t exactly what they might be called – but there were these men on stilts – stilts! – prowling about the “restaurant” like Tripods from War of the Worlds. At first I thought their function might be to make balloon animals for the child guests but no, their greatest and grimmest joy was to discover a hapless guest who might be celebrating a birthday, for then this news was bellowed out to the “restaurant” at large in the harsh and angry and menacing voice of a Marine drill instructor, while an accusatory finger was pointed at the mortified “guest.” This was followed by the piercing blast of a police whistle, to no purpose.

Many balloons were blown up and many a balloon popped with a sharp crack. This went on throughout the “evening,” and I was reminded of that scene in Boogie Nights where the central characters go to make a phony drug deal and their victim’s Bennie Boy is continually lighting off firecrackers in the background, driving everyone up the wall. Same exact deal here.

And looming over all, on jumbo football-stadium style monitors, was Mr. Buffet himself, sittin’ on his front porch swing and strummin’ his six-string, one famous music video after another, celebrating the (well, duh!) joy of sticking one’s toes in Caribbean sand and having a good, stiff drink. The dichotomy between this sentiment and what was going on inside his “restaurant” was about as sharp as piping jolly Christmas carols into an execution chamber along with the cyanide.

Food. Well. I had the coconut-fried shrimp, and it was sort of like a super-crunchy and super-sweet Almond Joy with a dab of some meat-like substance at its center. The drinks were at least honest. The Margarita I ordered had plenty of bite, I’ll give it that. But what I really wanted was a Mohito, and the waiter was only too happy to inform me that drinks not on the menu were forbidden. Why, I could only imagine. Perhaps if they made an off-menu drink then Orlando would burst into flames, the men would be bound into slavery, and their wives would be made into whores. That’s the only logical explanation I could come up with.

Good news dept: there was not one single tiki or moai anywhere. And I thank God for that. I really do. I don’t know if I could’ve taken such a desecration with any sort of grace.

I hope I’m not coming across as a snob, but that’s not for me to judge. To tell you the truth, I’ve gotten to the point where I don’t like big fancy dinners at big fancy restaurants, however nice they are. For me a memorable dinner is two or three tasty things straight off the grill from a street vendor in Bangkok, consumed at a rickety plastic table while a monsoon rain thunders just outside the stall. That’s what I call tall eatin’.

Don't get on the ship! Don't get on the ship!

[ Edited by: Satan's Sin 2005-11-26 18:10 ]