This afternoon I got to spend time with my daughter. We had lunch in downtown Joliet at the Joliet Junior College Culinary Arts Center. My grandson, (her son) was part of the staff in the kitchen. Joey, is in his final semester in the Culinary Arts curriculum. His station today was sandwiches. The school did an amazing job of designing a kitchen-restaurant for teaching kids to become chefs, and hospitality managers. Thank goodness Jacque made reservations because the place was filled to capacity. The once a week luncheon operates between 11:30 and 1:00 p.m. We arrived at noon, but it took me fifteen minutes to find a parking spot. Like most city centers Joliet is a menage of big buildings, separated by narrow streets which are laden with traffic.
After three circles around the block, I finally found a street spot a block and a half away from the restaurant. I parallel parked like a pro and we disembarked. I failed to notice a sign next to the spot which read “No Parking Special Event, vehicles will be towed,” oops! I told Jacque to wait there for me and I would go to the garage a block further up the street.
The garage was five floors high and had exits on three sides, with only one entrance on the west side. Of course I had to drive around the building to find that one entrance. I turned in to see a sign Hotel Parking. Joliet s a famous casino town and this garage was next to the casino. There was no gate nor a ticket vendor at the entrance. I found a spot of the second floor, and parked. I met Jacque and we walked back to the restaurant.
The lunch menu was great. We had a Thai egg roll for appetizer and she had a tomato, bean soup that resembled chili. There was a bread basket on the table with an assortment of home-made dinner rolls, and a plate of specially flavored butters. I sampled them all. Three of the four butters were very tasty, and one was bland. The rolls were excellent and fresh-baked. For my entre I ordered a bacon, cheese topped packed pork wrap. It was excellent. Jacque ordered a monster hamburger which she could only eat a small part of. A gob of very salty french fries sided each sandwich with a small cup of special catsup. We brought most of it home. For dessert we ordered a chocolate mouse topped custard pie served with dabs of lemon, lemon sorbet, a dollop of whipped cream, and a small portion of orange marmalade. Wow! We did finish that.
The entire restaurant is a teaching laboratory, Waitresses took orders on a tablet connected wirelessly to the kitchen. Each chef received his work load electronically and the time to table measured as a metric of performance. The wait staff was measured on the time it took them to get to the table, then the time it took to take our order, and finally on the time between what it took the chef to finish an order to the time the order made it to the table. I thought, my God why would a person want to go to college to be a waitress? I quizzed our waitress, she was really attending the school in the curriculum of Hospitality Management, and was required to spend one semester working the restaurant for lunch. She went to school three days a week and worked three different jobs the remaining four days. She is a typical energetic college kid.
Jacque and I sauntered back to the car crossing a couple of streets which had walk signs. We were waiting for the red hand to turn so we could cross safely. “You know Jacque, the liberals of our country have overlooked a very racist government controlled feature of our transportation system.”
“What?”
“Look at us, we are waiting for the little white man to let us know it is safe to cross.”
“Da-ad, what do you expect them to do?”
The libs are always poking us about white privilege and how whites reign supreme over all other colors of people but they overlooked the most racist symbol of control over people, the little white man who allows us to cross a street. It is never a little black man, nor a yellow man, he is always white. He lords over all races, and the libs don’t say a word about it. Instead they demolish hundred year old statues, and confederate flags as racist symbols while completely overlooking the millions of these walk signs around the entire country. She changed the subject and I was glad she did.
Mosey sign on crossing.
Filed under: Biography, Conservative, family, Food, Sarcasm | Tagged: Chefs, Culinary Arts, Joliet Junior College, Walk Signs | Leave a comment »
