Bebo = Blech-o

As promised, here's the follow-up re: Friday's dinner at Bebo.

I usually try to give places the benefit of the doubt, but this time I can't. To sum up, the dinner was easily the worst dining experience of my life. I think it would be too traumatic to recount the whole thing in minute detail.

We saw our server three times the whole evening. We waited about 25 minutes before he stopped in at our table for the first time. We ordered two glasses of wine. They never showed...even though we asked for them twice. My favorite part of the evening was when the waiter brought the check. He made a specific point of telling us, 'I had the manager take care of all the wine.' SVR and I were both very confused by the comment. 'All the wine' suggests we received part of the wine order. Not true. We got nuthin'. I was polite to the waiter all night, but couldn't help but ask him to clarify his point about excusing the wine from the check. He told us that he gladly had the manager remove the charge. No shit, right? Would it make more sense to leave the charge on the check...even though we never received the product? What a moron. I was sure to let him know that, despite his tone of voice that suggested otherwise, he wasn't doing any favors for us by removing the charge.

The funniest thing about the evening was how the terrible service left SVR and me with nothing else to talk about during dinner. It's not like, when we get great service at a restaurant, we spend the whole meal dwelling on how smoothly everything is going. On the other hand, the grossly inadequate service left us talking about it for the entire time we were at Bebo.

As for the food, it was pretty mediocre. I had chicken that was adequately flavorful...good herbs, good grill char, good citrus. It was pretty disappointing that the dish came with absolutely no accompaniment. SVR's meatballs were tasty, but very cold in places. The sides, some rapini and some sauteed potatoes, were below average. The rapini were way too bitter and had none of the promised garlic or red pepper flakes. The potatoes were a little too greasy and much closer to fried than sauteed.

The whole experience was god-awful, particularly considering how excellent the Osteria always was.

In other news...Granogue!! I went with Evan to watch the racing. It was pretty painful to watch without getting to do. Evan had a strong showing...fourth out of about 70 starters. The course looked like a blast. Lots of off-camber, some great descents, two run-ups that the many of the pros RODE, and an oddly placed barriers section. I set out to TP at 7AM and rode the Surly. The chain was super-loose and I actually threw the chain off the cog and chainring. Bad news. The beefy chain banged up the chainstay pretty nicely. Re-tensioned things at Evan's and we then hit the road.

Drive up was nice. Beautiful fall scenery the whole way and the time flew by. The atmosphere at the race was so perfect. The free beer was flowing as of about 10AM. Folks were generally friendly and it was pretty cool to rub shoulders with the pros. The crowd was sizeable and very enthusiastic. Here are a few shots of Todd Wells, Kabush, Wicks, and a few others at the sign-in tent.

I have a heck of a time formatting photos for this blog, so I'll leave it at that.

The pros were fast and Trebon pulled away for a significant gap and a win.

The drive home was full of traffic. Once back in DC, I hopped on the Surly again and popped into the Park for the ride home. It was amazing in the Park...dusky, quiet, serene, empty, and pleasantly cool.

Once home, it was a quick shower, some cleaning up at the apartment, and then back out to hook up with Drew, Steph, and Evan for some proper 'hall-pass' festivities. In the end, that amounted to a little too much beer, some rude jokes, and not much more. Dinner and drinks were at Fado. Good spot. Even better considering the manager is one of my junior high and high school friend's kid sister. It's always great to see her there and she usually extends a pretty good hook-up to me and the gang. She was generous again last night, so the night out was cheap. Always good. Steph did a car bomb. That was funny.

Today's Sunday. Evan dragged my mildly hung over ass out for a morning ride. Glad to get out there. Of course, the weather forecasters are effin' morons. They were calling for decent weather in the a.m. and rain in the p.m. It spit some drops on me on my way into the Park at 10:15AM. The skies have been bright blue since around 1:30PM. Go figure. I think I would've stayed out on the bike longer if the weather was like this earlier in the day. Oh well.

That's the latest. Blogging should be a little smoother now that we have an Internet connection. Hopefully I'll have some good eats to report on this week. Even better, hopefully the Redline will come together this week and I'll finally get to racin'.