Last night, I was helping GF's boss get ready for an event this weekend. It was getting past my usual dining hour, so I walked across Magazine Street to Juan's to get a shrimp quesadilla and a couple of margaritas.
After I finished the chow and sips, an agent of the restaurant came to me and demanded that I pay for the items I'd consumed. She claimed that, as the prices for the items were posted on the menu from which I'd ordered them, and that the items as described were delivered to my table, I was somehow obliged to pay the restaurant nearly twenty dollars.
A little history: the Juan's chain has been in New Orleans since 1997, serving a varying menu of Tex-Mex dishes, often prepared with a local slant.
By contrast, my family (in the guise of me) has been in the city much longer. I've been grazing at Mexican restaurants since the days when The Bean Pot was on Maple Street and there was only one Taqueria Corona, which didn't even have a phone! Heck, I even made sandwiches at Nature's Way, which had the building before Roberto ever opened Taqueria.
Fast forward to last night, when I refused to pay the illegal and unfair fees imposed on me by Juan's. When I stood on my rights as an Orleanian, the management had the temerity to call the NOPD on me, I called a bunch of my friends who came down with automatic weapons to help me defend my rights. On a hunch, I also called up a bunch of sympathetic news reporters and food critics to cover the spectacle.
When they arrived on the scene, the NOPD officers decided they didn't want to get into a vicious firefight and standoff over a twenty dollar tab and went back to the 2nd District station house.
Which, naturally, means I was right all along and that Juan's management had overreached in their tyrannical presentation of a bill to me last night.
Point of fact, I disagree with the idea that the management of Juan's even exists.
Despite the fact I'm carrying their takeout menu in my shirt pocket.