The 45 minute wait would not do...especially since we already had movie tickets for a 7:40 pm showing. So while Ed parked the car, I found out that they serve the full menu at the bar so I grabbed 2 stools and turned in our pager.
We were greeted by Bartender Jason whom we later found out is the Executive Bartender for the entire Great American Restaurant group. And we could see why. Not only was he extremely friendly and comfortable behind the bar, he can make a MEAN drink. There was a gentleman sitting to our right that was clearly a regular. When he sat down he told Jason to "surprise him" and he did with a delicious drink made with Absolute Citron, Cucumber Water and something lemony. Of course I had to try it!
We ate a lovely meal - Ed had Veal Piccata and I had Rigatoni Gorgonzola Dolce. We were also entertained not only by the busy bar staff, but by our fellow bar patrons. As I mentioned, there was a regular on our right who happened to be very chatty. He gave us many a recommendation on the menu and some history of both the restaurant group and our friendly bartender, Jason. On our left was a lovely older gentleman who forgot his glasses and asked me to read portions of the menu to him. This is one of the reasons I LOVE sitting at the bar. Not only do you skip the 45 minute wait, but you find yourself interacting with the people around you. After our free dessert courtesy of our new favorite bartender, we were ready for our movie.
We took a quick walk over to the movie theatre and made our way to the concession stand. If you know Ed, you know that he can't see a movie without popcorn...even if he was 100% full from a yummy dinner. Why didn't we get our tickets first, you ask? Well, Ed won some free movie passes so we already had our vouchers in hand. We just needed to find the theatre...but for some reason it was not listed on the board. We found 2 employees that looked like Managers and asked them where our movie was. They took one look at the vouchers and smiled telling us that we were at the wrong theatre. DOAH! Source Code was playing at Fairfax Town Center and we were in Fairfax Corner.
With a look of disappointment in our eyes, we were ready to head to the car, but then the Manager said something that made us very happy. She would honor the tickets we had and allow us to pop into any movie we wanted to see. It may have helped that we already had popcorn in hand! Since I had no interest in seeing Thor, we were escorted to a theatre that was showing The Conspirator. It had already started and we missed the first 10 minutes, but who cares. We were so appreciative that they let us in! And I have to say, the movie was really great...go see it if you haven't already. We also learned a fun fact about the movie business. Apparently the movie companies don't want to create unfair competition amongst local theatres, so they make them share their profits...even if they are different brands. Very interesting.
So there you have it. Our date night didn't go as planned, but it still ended up being great.
