My wife and I went to Hooters because she loves steamed clams. We ordered drinks and two appetizers and our meal. We got our drinks, but 40 minutes later, we still had not received our appetizer. We asked the waitress, who seemed very unconcerned about it. She did say that she had asked the cook to put a rush on the appetizer. I'm thinking, OK, if this is how long it takes with a rush, how long would it take without the rush request? We sat there for 10 more minutes and watched the waitress bring food to another table where the folks had come in after we had.

Finally, we got up and went to pay for our drinks. We told the manager that we had to go because we had to pick our kids up at 1000 and it was already 910 -- and we hadn't even received our appetizers... Our kids were at Reinertsen Elementary for one of those Parents' Night Out things and we HAD to be there at 1000 to pick them up. If we waited for our food, we would have pretty much had to box it up and take it with us.

So much for Parents' Night Out I guess... On the plus side, the manager didn't charge us for my wife's beer and my Pepsi.

Maybe I could have understood it if there were a lot of people there, but it really wasn't busy at all. There were as many empty tables as full tables (I guess I can see why...) and most of them had customers who were drinking rather than eating. So, who knows? Maybe the waitress just lost our order.

We went to Burger Time in Moorhead and had a great burger. We sat in the parking lot and ate it. I felt kind of bad for my wife because we are so busy that we don't get to go out all that often -- maybe once every two weeks -- and she was really looking forward to this. Well, there are lots of places in the F-M area where the food is good and the service is reasonable. We'll just permanently cross Hooters off our list in the future.