Strange Night at the Little Italian Place on the Corner

My husband wanted pizza for dinner, so we decided to go to the little Italian place on the corner.

We used to go there all the time, back when locals owned it and the menu was small and the food was reliable. There was a short, but decent wine list. On Tuesdays, kids ate for free. During the years when my husband was traveling and my children were young, I took them there every Tuesday night.

Then the little Italian place on the corner was bought up by one of those corporate restaurant chains that decorated with shiny white and black tile and put pictures of long dead celebrities on the walls and advertised happy hour, seven days a week. The menu was huge, the food was bland and the place was always jammed. We quit going.

But on Sunday Rob wanted pizza and the little Italian place was close by. “How bad can it be?” we asked ourselves, and anyway, we didn’t feel like driving. We walked over. When we got there it was busy, but they gave us a table right away, tucked into a corner by the bar. Frank Sinatra smiled down at us from the black and white tiled wall.

We ordered the veggie pizza, because I’m not a meat eater; the menu claimed it was bursting with roasted mushrooms and sun dried tomatoes. The bartender brought us our wine. After a while a man in an apron walked briskly by and slapped our pizza on the table without breaking stride. It was steaming hot and covered with a thick layer of cheese.

We dove in. I thought my slice tasted surprisingly smoky. After a bite or two, it occurred to me that the mushrooms were sausage.

“I think this is sausage,” I said to Rob.

“No,” he said, chewing. “Mushrooms.”

I poked around in the cheese and pulled out what was supposed to be a sun dried tomato. It was pepperoni.

We flagged a passing employee and told him that we got the wrong pizza. Without a word, he took the pan and whisked it away.

Time passed; we drank our wine and waited. Finally, a woman stopped by our table. She looked very uncomfortable.

“I’m Diane,” she said. “I’m a manager. We’re making you a veggie pizza, but it will take a while, because we are out of cheese.”

“Out of cheese?” I repeated, thinking I must have misunderstood.

She nodded sadly. “We requested more cheese, but it isn’t here yet. It’s driving.” She looked down at the table. “I’m so embarrassed.”

Rob said, “Can I have our old pizza back?”

She shook her head. “No. They threw it away.” She said it was going to take too long to get the cheese and we should order something else. We decided to try the pasta.

Later, a man came by and dropped our old sausage and pepperoni pizza on our table. Diane scurried over. “We found it!” she said, and rushed off.

“Where do you suppose that’s been?” I asked Rob.

He studied the pizza, then shrugged and took a slice. I poked at my pasta. It was bland.

Unasked, the bartender brought me a very big glass of wine. “Strange night, isn’t it?” he said.

“It really is,” I agreed. Frank Sinatra kept smiling.