Dining in Healdsburg

As I drive around in the little towns of California, I tend to fool myself into thinking that the restaurants I see are all undiscovered treasures. That I'll be able to say to all the girls I'm currently not managing to date that "I know this great Italian place in Healdsburg," and that she'll be all impressed with my knowledge of obscure eateries.

But it's just not true. All these places are terrible.

This week I went to the afore mentioned Italian place in Healdsburg for lunch. I got there at 11:30am, and was a little worried they wouldn't be open yet. Their sign said they opened for lunch at 11am, but their door communicated a certain indisputable lockedness. But after jiggling the handle, the waitress / chef / hostess / girl-still-on-high school-winter-break opened the door and told me I could sit wherever I liked. (She was decked out in the lasted Healdsburg fashions: Pink studded belt, pink shirt, matching pink eye shadow, and expertly crimped hair.)

I wandered through 3 rooms of empty seats and finally settled on a booth near a window in the back. Unfortunately the booth wasn't wild about me sitting there, and the bench tipped up and tried to dump me onto the floor. I chose a different booth.

When presented with the menu, I decided on a chef salad with ranch dressing (the greatest condiment in the universe), and a lemonade.

Let's define some things before I go on.

Chef Salad: A salad containing lettuce, ham, turkey, cheese, and tomatoes. Optional ingredients include mushrooms, carrots, sprouts, and pickled beats.

Lemonade: A translucent yellow drink coming from either a can, a bottle, from squeezing lemons and adding sugar, or from country time brand lemonade powder.

Agreed?

The chef salad that arrived on my table included the following: Lettuce (good), carrots (still on the right track), ham (they sure know how to make a salad), salami (no!), garbanzo beans (seriously, no!), kidney beans (this is now 2 too many beans), 2 pepperincinis (these I like but was not expecting), and NO cheese. Where's my turkey?

Then there was my lemonade. I have never seen something in a glass that opaque which didn't include ice cream as a main ingredient. My theory is that it was made from putting lemon flavored spice drops through a juicer. Then they added a little water so the ice in the glass would have something to float in. Refreshing.

Since I was the only person in the restaurant, the service was still pretty good despite the fact that 5 calls came in during the half hour I sat there, all of which were for the waitress. My favorite call was one where she told the person, "I want to go to Thailand and hug a lemur. Yeah, lemurs are super cute. Or maybe a sloth. Sloths are just so chill."

Instead of being able to explain the wide variety of undiscovered culinary delights in Northern California, I can explain where subways are in San Rafael, San Francisco, Oakland, Napa, American Canyon, Kentfield, Cloverdale, Davis, Sacramento, and Vallejo, and I'm sure I'm forgetting some.