Wednesday, September 7, 2011

It’s Tradition!

My extended family has a tradition of going to the restaurant Johnny Carinos every time we go to Utah. It kind of started because when my family lived in Texas we loved to go there but when we moved to Virginia we didn’t have any close by. There just happened to be one a few minutes away from where my grandparents lived so we could all meet up and go to lunch or dinner. It is really good because almost everyone in my family loves it, including the really picky cousins.

As it turns out, having around twenty people at one table to eat is really interesting. Don’t get me wrong, it is always fun but sometimes it doesn’t turn out as planned.

 One of the best things about Johnny Carinos is their bread. It is made at the restaurant and they have delicious olive oil with herbs and garlic in it to dip the bread in. When you have so many people, that bread goes FAST. They give us two or three baskets with a couple of small loaves at a time.  Basically as soon as the baskets touch the table they are emptied. Even when we have our dinner everyone still takes bread. I don’t know how many loaves we end up getting, but it turns out to be like thirteen or fourteen baskets. That means the adults end up eating almost one basket a piece, I know I eat that maybe even more, which is a whole lot of bread.

Another amazing thing about Johnny Carinos is their Italian sodas. They are delicious! They are mostly fruit flavors and they have cream at the top and are carbonated. They aren’t like orange or grape soda though; I think they have the actual fruit in it instead of a flavoring. I guess they are like cream sodas with the various flavors added or something like that.

We end up having multiple waiters to be able to cover the whole table to refill drinks, bring bread and grab anything else we need. One time these waiters were really on top of things. One came by and asked me if I needed a refill. One minute later a different waiter came by and asked the same question. I had said yes to the first, and yes to the second not realizing I would be brought a second refill I didn’t need yet. Instead of telling him my mistake, or just having an extra drink I made up a plan. As soon as the first came I drank it in like ten seconds flat. It was ridiculous, but I just wanted to avoid anything awkward. Anna, and my cousins watched me do this, and they too thought I was insane. As soon as the waiter came with my second refill all of us started giggling at him. Every time we go out to dinner there, Anna and I always remember this and start uncontrollably laughing. It’s not even hard to bring up this memory, all we have to say is “remember that one time at Johnny Carinos?” This experience just shows how I can turn anything normal into something ridiculous and completely laughable.

Two years ago when we went, it was pretty hilarious because my cousin Jayben brought in a suction cup and started putting it on people's foreheads. Luckily nobody had any permanent impressions on their heads from this but it was pretty funny. Another funny thing was some random creepy joke involving Clue. Anna, my cousins Tye and Brittany, and I kept giving each other secret signals of some sort. We kept doing weird eyebrow raising and staring until the person looked at us. At one point I wrote "Mrs. Peacock, the dining room, the knife" on a napkin and put it under Tye's plate. He saw me doing something weird but didn't know what, so after awhile I gave him another telling him to look under his plate. When he read it, he was pretty creeped out that I did that in the first place, and secondly that I had done it under his nose.

Jayben putting the suction cup on Brittany.

Sadly, nothing of interest happened last year that I can really remember. 

This past time, there was some random things that went on. Tye had a mad libs app on his phone and we did some before our food came. Now that was interesting. We had some crazy words going in there that sounded hilarious in the stories. There was something about a beautiful gordita (fat woman), and turning urine into blood that was somehow indistinguishable. Eww. Another interesting thing was Jayben sitting with Anna. Usually he can be contained, at least a little, but not that night. He was laughing up a storm and could not stop! He sat in Anna's lap giggling over absolutely nothing for ten minutes. Well, I think it might have been less than that, because we started tickling him. It was ridiculous how loud and crazy the scene was. Jayben was flailing and laughing and our whole table was chatting, which was too bad for all the people around us.

Maybe next time it will be even more crazy than it has been in the past.

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