Skip to main content

The Angel at the Next Table

This is not a restaurant review. This is the tale of a hometown adventure.

My husband and I decided to try Sonoma's in Owen Brown last night. We had just enough time to have dinner before picking up our daughter from her youth group activity at the Interfaith Center. We had never eaten there, but it seemed like a no-brainer. It's right across the parking lot from OBIC.

First impressions--it's one enormous room with an excess of tevevisions. And then, the realization: we have stumbled on to the Sunday football crowd. The televisions were loud, the patrons were pleasantly boisterous. We took a table and looked around for a waitress.

There wasn't one. Well, actually, there was one waitress for the entire place and she was also tending bar. She was very friendly under the circumstances. She took our order promptly, got our drinks, and then...

We waited. And waited. And we began to worry that we wouldn't be finished in time to get our daughter. Our phones weren't picking up a signal for some reason so we couldn't text her.

I began to think that our waitress/bartender was also the cook.

My husband made an executive decision to pop over to touch base with our daughter. Almost as soon as he left, our food appeared. As I looked up to say thanks I noticed that the server wasn't our waitress but some nice woman from the table next to ours.

"I used to work here," she explained. "I'm just trying to help out."

My husband came back, we ate, asked for the check. As we finished, the mysterious woman from the next table appeared once more.

"Don't write off this place because of tonight. She's really short-handed. I worked here for years. It's really a wonderful place."

We heard her go to the waitress and say, "Take one of their sandwiches off their check and put it on my bill."

Wow. That's loyalty.

Hats off to that poor woman who was running an entire restaurant by herself yesterday. And, to the angel at the next table, thanks. We'll come back again and give Sonoma's another chance.

Maybe not during Sunday football, though.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Getting Fresh

One of my favorite days in the Spring comes when this year’s list of Farmer’s Markets is released. That happened this week. New this year are markets in Old Ellicott City and the “Merriweather Market” which, according to the address, will be located here . I mistakenly thought at first glance that it was in the new-construction part of the Merriweather District. I find the name confusing considering its actual location. I’m going to guess that this market is an initiative of the Howard Hughes Corporation because the name seems chosen more for branding purposes than anything else.  Alas, the market in Maple Lawn is gone. The thread on the markets on the County Executive’s FB page will provide you with quite the education in who actually runs the Farmers Markets vs what people often think is going on. Short answer: they are not  chosen nor run by the county. Each market is an independent entity, sometimes started by community volunteers, other times supported by local businesses...

They Can Wait

This is not a typical Saturday post. That’s because, in my community, it’s not a typical Saturday.  Oakland Mills High School, after years of deferred repair, needs massive renovation. It’s pretty simple: when you don’t fix a problem it gets bigger. The school system itself said the the OMHS school building was  "no longer conducive to learning" back in 2018.  2018 .  But Thursday the Boad of Education voted to push it out of the lineup of important projects which will be given the go-ahead to proceed soonest.  In my opinion it’s a terrible decision and sets a dangerous precedent. To explain, here’s the advocacy letter I sent in support of Oakland Mills High School. I was rather proud of it. I am writing to ask you to proceed with needed renovation at Oakland Mills High School in the most timely and comprehensive manner humanly possible. I have read the letter sent to you by the Oakland Mills Community Association and I am in complete agreement. You are extremel...

What Kids Are Thinking

  It’s a Monday in February, and if you guessed that a lot of Howard County students have the new cell phone policy on their minds, you’d be right. It will mean big changes and it will be stressful, no matter how much good we hope it will do in the long run. But on this particular Monday cell phones might not be top of mind, as amazing as that seems. Some kids will go to school wondering if they or family members will be seized by ICE. Some will fear that their parents’ employment will be purged by the ongoing rampage of Elon Musk and his cronies through Federal Government. Some fear heightened and renewed racism as programs that supprted Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion are vilified and destroyed.  Some worry that it soon won’t be safe for them to use the bathroom in school anymore. It goes without saying that some kids fear going to school every day because of the prevalence of school shootings.  And look! Here’s something new to fear. That old hate group, Libs of TikTo...