Chris Risner . Com

Last week a friend of mine from Arizona was visiting Michigan and had we had a chance to hang out with him for a couple of nights.  While he was here, he purchased for Erin and I our first edition of Monopoly.  Erin and I have of course played before but WE have never owned it.  Having few people willing to play the fast-paced property-trading game in the overly warm state of Arizona, he relished the opportunity to sucker Erin and I into a game (or two).  After purchasing a copy from the local store, we got everything out and started playing.  I quickly learned that there are a couple rules that he is use to that I wasn’t. 

First and foremost, he doesn’t put any money in the middle.  No $500 to start and no tax money or money from Chance or Community Chest.  Growing up, I always put a fresh $500 in there and replaced that every time someone landed on Free Parking (who then took all the money).  I was ok with this one but the next one was just ridiculous.  If you have multiple railroads and someone lands on one of them, even if the others are mortgaged, you still collect the amount for having that many railroads.  This is just crazy.  He was pretty adamant that this was “the rule” but I had to overrule and call a “House Rule” to block him.  In my mind, if you have two railroads and someone lands on one, they owe you $50.  If however, the other railroad is mortgaged, it’s $25.  Period.  There’s no way around this one.  Thankfully, Hasbro’s official rules agree with me! 

So the question is, how do you play Monopoly?  Are there any weird rules you follow in your house?  Any idea why you have these rules?

For Valentine’s day this year, I decided to take Erin out to Big Fish in Dearborn.  While it’s been several years since I’ve been able to make it to Big Fish, I’ve tried to get to a Muer restaurant (be in Meriweather’s, Gandy Dancer, or any of the affiliated Muer restaurants (Rocky’s, Kruse and Muer)) as often as possible.  The quality of food and service at the Muer restaurants is some of the best to be had in metro Detroit, or so I thought.  After a fair amount of build up, I can happily say that neither of us were disappointed when it came to the food at Big Fish.  Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for our service.

Our server for the evening, Kyle B, was less than satisfactory.  To begin with, he took an exceedingly long time between his visits to our table when we first arrived.  Secondly, he seemed much more interested in taking care of the other tables around us.  At one point, he was just about to set our bread basket down at our table, literally a foot away from doing so, when he looked at another table, turned around and set it back on his tray so that he could go to their table and make sure everything looked alright.  In addition, he seemed to be attempting to make friendly conversation and build a rapport with the guests sitting around us, however, he wasted no such time on us.  He went so far as to talk about the Friends Dining Club with one couple and talked to another couple at length about travelling.  Not only was he not friendly, he seemed to be very aloof. Outside of just getting our order, I don't think he said more than two words to us the entire evening. 

It gave me the impression that as we appeared younger than the people around us, he just didn't care about our level of service.  Finally, the thing that really put a black spot on my evening, and did the most to lessen my chances of returning, he picked up our bill before we had even walked out of the restaurant.  Not only did he pick it up while we were putting our coats on at the table, he opened it to look at the tip we gave him.  He might as well have just said "you look like cheap jerks".  Even after the previous issues, we still left him an over 15% tip.  In hindsight, he deserved much less.  While I will stress again that the food was wonderful, the level of service was extremely poor, and is something I will definitely consider before returning to a Muer restaurant in the future.

A few days later I submitted my comments regarding our evening to Big Fish’s “Guest Comments” on their web site.  4 days later I received a response from William at Landry's Restaurants.  Landry's purchased Big Fish from the Muer restaurant group sometime after Charley Muer was lost at sea.  Instead of actually commenting in ANY WAY on my issue, the email was a canned response asking for my phone number so we could speak in person.  3 days later, on February 22nd, I replied with my phone number.  As of this post (March 25th), I have still not heard from anyone at Landry's via phone or email. 

The worst part about this whole affair is that the food was really good.  However, with the service we received and the shoddy attempt at doing anything to correct it by Landry’s, I don’t think I can see myself ever returning to Big Fish or EVER visiting a Landry’s restaurant in the future.  I even went so far as to share these thoughts on Yelp.  This is a perfect example of a situation that could have been fixed with minimal effort but was botched so horribly, it’s irrevocably left a mark on me.  Oh well, not it’s like I like going out to eat or doing anything food related.

After going to the Whitney for Detroit Restaurant Week last September, Erin and I have been paying pretty close attention to the Detroit Restaurant Week website in anticipation of this year’s DRW.  A month or so back, Erin noticed that they had updated the dates on the website from September to this April.  The 16th through the 25th to be exact.  The restaurants hadn’t changed and the menus were the same so we figured maybe they were just doing the same places.  A few days ago, we noticed that they had changed the site and said “more information would be coming soon”.  Just days ago, they updated the site with a list of the restaurants for 2010.  The menus that the restaurants will be offering aren’t out yet, but you can check their real menus out to get an idea of what they might offer.  The deal is $27 per person (excluding tax, gratuity, and beverages) for a three course meal (appetizer, entree, desert).  Typically you have several options between each course as well.  This year, Erin and I have already made reservations at:

• Wolfgang Puck at MGM
• Detroit Fish Market
• Iridescence at Motor City
• Coach Insignia
• Rattlesnake Club
• SaltWater at MGM

I’m looking most forward to the Rattlesnake Club as I’ve heard some really good things about it.  If you get a chance and have a free night April 16th - 25th, check out their site and make some reservations for yourself.  Considering the quality of some of these restaurants, it’s a hell of a deal.  That being said, I wouldn’t recommend the Whitney considering the other great restaurants.  As an example, last year one of Rattlesnake Club’s entree options was a half pound lobster!  I’ll be sure to write back about my experiences at each place as I did last year.