Carry Out (or: I Should Have Known Better)

So, the previous rant was prompted a couple days ago when I called a restaurant that clearly said they delivered on their website only to find out that's for large catering orders.  The person on the other end of the phone laughed at me when I said my order was for two people.  Sorry, I can not magically know that delivery means large orders only.  My bad.  I don't mind that they only deliver large orders, just that it's not specified.

Anyway, it was a restaurant I've really been wanting to try (Urban Eats Cafe) because I love sandwiches, and the reviews on yelp.com were awesome.  So I was disappointed that they wouldn't make it easy for me, and just deliver hopefully delicious sandwiches into my greedy little hands.

What's a person to do?  Send the boyfriend out in the pouring rain to get carry out, of course.

Alarm bells should have gone off when I called and ordered a sandwich that apparently isn't on the menu anymore.  Outdated websites are a pet peeve of mine.  Especially weirdly-designed outdated websites.  It's so easy to update your menu, especially if it's HTML and not a PDF (this one was a PDF).  (Aside: Local Harvest Cafe tends to suffer from outdated-website syndrome quite a bit too.  Maybe it's something about sandwich shops in St. Louis?).  And I know running a cafe is hard and busy, but for many of your customers, the website is going to be their first experience with your business, and you know what they say about good first impressions.

A-n-y-w-a-y, tonight I placed my order with a very nice person on the phone, and I am getting hungry and excited.  I am counting the minutes until the food arrives back at my house.  Finally, finally, finally the BF arrives.  He's carry SunChips and Jay's potato chips (so much for the homemade-looking chips from the website picture), a caddy with smoothies, and two of those spaghetti containers.  You know, like the one at the right.  Inside each is a 4 x 3 in. sandwich.  Seriously.  Each looks like it's been cut in half.  Where did the rest of my sandwich go?  I paid $4.79 for my veggie, and $5.49 for Gabe's meat sandwich, and that gets half a sandwich?  Are you kidding me?  That doesn't include the $0.89 chips or $3.49 smoothie either.  Our bread preferences had been switched.  And to top it off, the bottom half of my sandwich is completely soggy, which might be one of the saddest things in the world.  You know, after world hunger and all that jazz.

Needless to say, I'm incredibly disappointed.  I really wanted to like Urban Eats Cafe, and this feels almost like a betrayal.  I know that's pretty overly dramatic, but I am serious about my sandwiches.  Unfortunately there just aren't that many sandwich options in St. Louis, and because they seem like their heart is in the right place, I'll probably try out Urban Eats again.  Maybe my mistake was the carry out order - some food just doesn't travel well, or maybe this was an off-night for them.  And hey - my smoothie was pretty good, if you like banana and peanut butter.