Severely Underwhelmed

For my fifteenth wedding anniversary, I took my wife to La Caille, a snooty French restaurant at the mouth of Little Cottonwood Canyon. I had heard of La Caille before. It certainly has a very high reputation. It's likely the most expensive restaurant in the greater Salt Lake area. So when I was given $200 in gift certificates to La Caille, I was actually pretty excited to finally be able to experience the snooty Frenchness without having to foot the bill.

La Caille is in a VERY beautiful place. It's in a large, gated area, and as we drove up the brick-cobbled lane to the restaurant, we enjoyed the scenery. As we came closer to the restaurant, we noticed (much to my wife's joy) that the lawn was littered with BUNNIES. Real, live bunnies were running all over the place! And peacocks were strutting around too.

After relinquishing my vehicle to the valet, we walked in the front doors and were greeted by a tart with cleavage. As a matter of fact, before the night was over, we re-named the restaurant "Tarts With Cleavage."

"Welcome to Tarts With Cleavage. Are you ready to be seated or would you like to ogle for a while longer?"

Yes, all of the waitresses were wearing French tart costumes, and almost without exception, they had discovered the push-up bra. Now, I'm not saying that I'm not interested in cleavage. It's just that there's just one particular person's cleavage I'm interested in. That's one of the reasons that we were celebrating our fifteenth wedding anniversary - because I take the "cleave unto" thing literally. And that means generally NOT taking notice of other womens' cleavage.

Oh yeah, and our server was oldish, and honestly... Old cleavage? *shudder*

The menu that they brought out after we were seated had only appetizers. Our server gave us a somewhat disappointed look when we didn't want to see the wine list. I could almost SEE the "Great. Smaller tip." look on her face. We both ordered french onion soup. Apparently, the reward for ordering and consuming an appetizer is the actual dinner menu. "Well. Now that we see that you actually CAN eat, here's something you can REALLY sink your teeth into."

The prices on the menu were all spelled out. For example, instead of $56, it was printed as FIFTY-SIX. I think that's done to minimize the sticker shock. You see, it takes a while for one's brain to translate the words "FIFTY-SIX" into dollars, and even then, the brain disbelieves that a couple dollars' worth of ingreedients could be magically transformed into something that costs that much, so, in denial, the brain decides that it's item number FIFTY-SIX on the menu, or something like that. There was one exception. The Australian Rock Lobster didn't have a price. It simply said "FINANCING AVAILABLE."

Honestly, I've had better food in restaurants that are a lot less pricey. Maybe they feel that a glass or two of wine will make the food taste better. Maybe they feel that what they lack in taste, they make up in tart cleavage. Since I'm not interested enough in either, I was a little disappointed with the food.

Dessert, however, is quite a spectacle, even when served by one of the cleavage-less peasant boys that were occaisionally seen waiting tables. A lot of the desserts were accompanied by fire and the servers expertly poured flaming concoctions from gravy boats into large goblets. Both the chocolate cake and the creme brulee that we ate were excellent, and were, by far, the best part of the meal. All's well that ends well, right?

Well... almost.

For two appetizers, a couple of salads, a piece of prime rib, a couple of chicken breasts, and the aforementioned desserts, we were handed a bill that came to ONE HUNDRED FIFTY-SEVEN. HA! I kid! It wasn't actually spelled out like that on the bill. They used real numbers. By that time, you've already eaten everything you're going to eat, and spoiling your appetite with real numbers won't deprive the restaurant of any more money.

Our server DID do one more (rather common) trick to try to get a bigger tip from me. A 20% tip could come to about THIRTY-ONE on this particular bill. But when I received my change of just under FORTY-THREE, they gave me two twenty-dollar bills and two one-dollar bills. If I didn't have any cash in my wallet, I would have to either ask the server to break one of the twenties, or I would have to just leave FORTY on the table. Most often, people don't want to bother (especially when paying with gift certificates), and they just leave the larger tip.

So that was my experience at Tarts With Cleavage... I mean, La Caille. My overall rating would be overpriced, overrated, and too pushed-up, if you get my meaning. But having experienced it all on someone else's nickle, I can't really complain.