Feb. 13, 2008 at 3:45pm

what, what WHAT??? A bad meal???

(ya get what ya pay for...)

After our wonderful day in the mountain, the Man and I decided to go out for a bite.  I had a "free chef's choice appetizer" coupon for Masa/Asado, and I had a hankerin' for some good red wine.

The Man considers Masa one of his Happy Places in Tacoma, and it's our special Happy Place together, for early evening meals.  Usually, it's totally quiet in the restaurant and bar, and we sit and munch on chips, surf &  turf, Mexican beer, and wine.

Invariably, he  gets sticker shock when he sees that one glass of my wine costs more than two of his beers, and by the time I've had, say, three, it gets to be a healthy tab.

Imagine my delight when I saw that the Happy Hour included a wine list.The bartender was pretty quick to squash that delight, telling me they were out of the Zolo Cab and Zolo Malbec (damn, and double damn!) that usually are the "special."  After I asked if he could recommend a wine, he said, mmmmm, yeah, no.  Pretty much, we're gonna stop doing wines on the happy hour list.

Ohhhhhkeedokee.  I'll have a grapefruit and vodka, please and thanks, and then we showed him the coupon --the chef's choice was a pork empanada, we went, cool! And ordered two plates of the surf & turf. We received water and our drinks-- in French Jam jar glasses, not the cute hand blown glasses we'd grown accustomed to-- and all was well.  Without too long a wait, we received our food. 

The mole on the Surf &  Turf was divine, a creamy dreamy spicy heavenly mouthful that made my taste buds merengue.  Unfortunately, quite a few of the pieces of meat were super-gristle-ated, fatty, and just... ew. The man took the first bite of empanada and went, that's just... gross, and put it down.  I assumed he was being picky, so I took a huge bite to show him how wrong he was and had an immediate gag/spit it out reflex that made him laugh.  The texture was, as he explained, akin to cat food, and the flavor was something sweet, bitter, smoky, and just... vile.  

The server/bartender came to "check" on us, and I laughed, and said, those empanadas were bad.  He said, really? Like he was surprised, and mentioned nobody else had said that.  We sort of motioned the full plate-- about half a bite was gone out of two empanadas --to show him we were, in fact, stating the truth, those things were nasty.  I then mentioned that the "turf" part of my surf and turf was also disappointing, which the guy took in with a bit off a "hmmf," and a shrug.

Fortunately, the bill came to a little over $20, so we left happy.  We were filled with chips and the great mole flavor (and, for him at least, a plate full of surf and turf) and had no real complaints.  But then, I guess for me, it was also a bit disappointing.

I don't know if I expected the server to comp something? Offer us a dessert? Offer a glass of wine from an opened bottle as a substitution for the wine special? Be sincere as he apologized that the meal was inadequate?

I dunno.  I guess I was expecting too much service out of a happy hour/free coupon experience.