The Regular Customer, The Usual Order

[happyfilmluvguy]

You've seen the scene. Man enters a joint, pops up a chair at the counter and says....."Hiya, Al! I'll have the usual"

So what's a "joint" that you regularly tread, where everybody knows your name, or at least some of the employees, and what's your usual?

 

[John in Covina]

One place i will usually know a bunch of people, plus the owner and his wife is "The Stuffed Sandwich" in San Gabriel. While the beer line up on tap changes and is the subject of great review, the numerous sandwiches to choose from becomeas a more focused list for me and my tastes. I will always receive recognition by name.

http://www.stuffedsandwich.com/

 

[CharlieH.]

The school cafeteria. The "usual" is a hershey's bar.

 

[Elaina]

I keep to myself, so they know me as the coffee and Dr. Pepper couple. I used to be the waitress that knew the usual.

 

[PrettySquareGal]

I don't currently have such a place, but there was a coffee shop in NYC I used to frequent before school.

I'd walk in, sit down. 90 seconds later the waiter would throw my breakfast plate like a frisbee. It slid and stopped in front in front of me, steam pouring off of my eggs and home fries.

Only then would he say "Hi, how ya doin'?"

I miss that place.

One other thing I recall- There was another coffee shop I went to a lot for dinner to get take-out. About 15 years later I was in an uptown NYC coffee shop and that waiter was now working there and he remembered me and what I liked to order.

 

[LizzieMaine]

All my favorite downtown eatieries:

The Rockland Cafe -- two scrambled eggs, a side of sausage, white toast, and a cup of tea. Used to go there every Saturday morning when I could afford the extravagance of a breakfast out.

The Brass Compass Cafe -- A "Portsidah" sandwich: fried chicken, ham, and swiss cheese on a bulkie roll. And a Coke on the side. A cheap and easy lunch, and they're just a couple doors down from the theatre.

The Thorndike Creamery -- a kid-size Vanilla on a sugar cone. Or if I'm really feeling prosperous, a slice of cheese pizza.

 

[MK]

.

A local cheesesteak sandwich shop. Don, the owner does the cooking. When he sees me he starts making my usual.....a spicy steak sandwich. He calls out my name when it is ready.

Don is providing service that you just don't get in most places. Our society keeps gravitating towards corporate chains that can rarely provide that kind of service with their high turnover staff. I on the other hand keep seeking out the independent, owner/operator joints.

 

[Quigley Brown]

This past Friday a first happened to me. I meet a regular group of people for happy hour down at a local Spanish restaurant/bar. I always have a nut brown ale. When the bartender came up I told her I'll have a....she finished my sentence with 'a nut brown.' That was kind of cool.

 

[Zemke Fan]

You KNOW you are consuming too much...

when every bar you enter they wink and say: Tanquerary martini, straight up, extra dry, no olives. (I'm thinking about changing my name.)

 

[BegintheBeguine]

Magical bartenders

My bartender remembered what my best friend had the one time he went there five years earlier when he returnned with me one night.

 

[ShooShooBaby]

they don't do it automatically, but at the mexican place i frequent (la sirenita on ne alberta, they know i'm going to order the cactus burrito. i'm sure if i didn't spend a couple minutes looking at the menu, trying to make myself order something else for once, they would just get it started!

the locally-owned mexican chain (chachacha) knows me at THREE of their locations, and that i'm gonna get the relleno burrito.

i think portland is one of the best places for locally-owned places to eat/drink/etc, and despite being a veggie, there's still so many options for eating that we don't really have a place we ALWAYS go... except the abovementioned because they're super-cheap!

 

[Tomasso]

Just last night I walked into my favorite beer bar on the beach and was greeted by the bartender with,"I was afraid you were going to come in tonight"..............They'd run out of my usual, Dogfish Head IPA.

 

[MK]

.

What part of the country are you in Tomasso?

 

[CanadaDoll]

The coffee shop I used to frequent had the same girl every friday, who immediately knew me as 'small-skim-vanilla-latte-red-lipstick-girl'lol ,within two weeks, but she left a while back, poor girl was working waaaaay to hard, and now I don't go cause it's just not as fun

And there's also a girl at a local clothing store who knows me based on the clothes I buy therelol (she does her job really well, I spend a lot of money in there when she's working )

 

[Tomasso]

What part of the country are you in Tomasso?

Right now I'm in South Miami Beach.

 

[Mojito]

The local coffee shop knows my order.

Once upon a time, the State Parliament House dining room knew I'd be having roast quail with a side order of sweet chili sauce.

 

[Rockapin-up]

theres this drive through coffee shack called Gotta Java in Pasadena that I drive through on my way to work. The girl is real nice and just after a couple of visits she knew my order, and as soon as she sees my car pull up she gets sarted on it. Sometimes I swear she already has it ready before I even get there

 

[ShooShooBaby]

And there's also a girl at a local clothing store who knows me based on the clothes I buy there (she does her job really well, I spend a lot of money in there when she's working

boy do i know about this. i have a dear friend who i met because he owned my favorite vintage store. he would come back from buying trips and have a mental list of items coming in the shipment that he was saving just for me! i think he knew my style better than i did!

 

[pretty faythe]

My place isn't for food or drink, its for fun. The family and I go to a place called Pottery Paws where we paint our own pottery. We don't have a usual, but they now all of our names, we are a group of 6. I was just stating to my daughter that we should really know their names, since they know ours.

 

[MAGNAVERDE]

I innocently acquired an incipient hankering after gin from chewing juniper berries as a kid, and as soon as I was legal, I started having an after-work martini with Patricia, the lady bartender at the big-deal hotel dining room where I worked nights while I was in college. I was a terrible waiter & my tips partly depended on my sense of humor & partly on my wholesome, corn-fed looks--think Andy Hardy trying to channel William Powell: it was sad--but mostly, my tips depended on my customers' pity, because I was a total klutz.

But I couldn't live on dimples & pity forever, and although many of my co-workers made decent livings working second jobs at other restaurants or private clubs--even Patricia, who ran the place, had a day job in a tavern--I knew I had to find an industry that didn't involve my carrying trays of drinks in stemmed glasses, so a few weeks after I graduated, I found work in the engineering department at the phone company.

My first day on the job was another engineer's last day & the whole office was taking him out to lunch. I didn't know anybody, but they were nice enough to invite me to come along anyway, so we squeezed into a few cars & drove across town to--Burger King? I didn't even tknow the guy retiring but I though that was pretty lame.

Except we weren't going to Burger King after all, but to the Stumble Inn, a dingy-looking dive made out of an old Quonset hut on a side street behind it. One of my new co-workers had picked up on my confusion & said "What? Did you think we were taking him to Burger King? No, we only go first class.!" He gestured at a rusty metal awning that was about ready to fall off one of the windows. "I guess this was Jack's hangout when he was a lineman. What a dump. Ever been here?" I just laughed & assured him it wasn't my kind of place. "Me either" he said.

We walked across the rutted gravel parking lot & stumbled into the mid-day gloom, with me in the lead. Before my eyes could even adjust, Patricia's familiar voice called out from behind the bar. "Hiya Mag! Starting early today, aren't ya? You gonna have your regular?