Artichoke Joe's

December 3, 2005
By: Erotic

Today for my lunch break I decided to go to Artichoke Joe's. It's an alright restaurant with a full bar and gambling. Mostly cards from what I observed, but I didn't have any time for that unfortunately. So I walk into the Casino entrance, and it definitely looks Vegas'ish but definitely smoke free and not as cool.

I make my way through the casino to the bar/eating area. It has a nice rustic feel; besides the 72" big screen TV in the corner.

I'd been into the dinning part of the establishment but they only serve specials everyday and none of them sounded appetizing at the previous time. However, a certain Orange Chicken with Rice caught my eye.

The order taker says it'll be ten minutes before its ready so I take a seat against the wall at a two person table in view of said TV that was showing the women's pool championship finals, which turned out to be pretty epic; but that's another story for another time.

Over the intercom I suddenly hear an alarming announcement that the owner of a blue mustang with blah, blah, blah license plate left their lights on. Now I knew it wasn't my car cause the license plate the announcer read off didn't match, but I had for some reason turned my lights on for the drive over and couldn't for the life of me remember if I had turned them off cause I was annoyed by the fact it was raining on my lunch; seeing as how I could have just walked to the restaurant.

It is also conceivable that not the average person knows the difference in design of old cars so I decide to check since my food was still being prepared. After braving the rain again I was satisfied that my car would start again in another hour and I welcomed the shelter of the casino.

Then by the time I got back to the dinning area my food was ready and so I decided to get a drink from the bar. I walk up to observe they have egg-nog because of the time of year. This gives me the perfect opportunity to get an egg-nog 'n drambuie.

I ask for it, but I come up empty handed, because he couldn't find the bottle of drambuie. I tell em no worries and order up a 7 to7 at the drop of a hat; to which he obliges with enthusiasm. After a generous tip I'm set with my food and alcoholic beverage.

A few minutes pass and I'm interrupted by the legitimate bar tender, after crossing the entire dinning area, to tell me he found the bottle of drambuie and that the next drink is on him. Granted I've only been going to bars for a couple years but I've never been, or seen given a free drink by a bartender; I wasn't about to turn it down either.

After some excitement in the woman's pool championship I'm completely done with a great meal and I definitely have time to kill.

So I go up to the bar and tell him I'm ready for that free drink, to which he makes perfectly. Upon first taste I can tell it's going to be a great drink throughout.

I'm sitting down, relaxing, watching the last bit of the pool championship and feeling pretty good; probably cause of the alcohol.

Then all of a sudden he yells across the dinning area in a friendly voice, "well how is it?"

To which I reply, "Excellent, I couldn't have made it any better."

Where he then responds with, "I never would have thought of that combination."

Now I didn't have a response for this cause he looked like a pretty veteran bartender so I took that as a pretty good compliment. So now I've finished two heavily alcoholic beverages in about 45 minutes and decide I should head back to work.

I get there on time but after about 30 minutes of working on some online material I definitely feel deerunk.

This effect lasts for far longer than I intended and I have the suspicion the egg-nog made it difficult to absorb and process the alcohol. It went unnoticed but I think I'll definitely stick to one drink next time, like I had originally planned.