Flunky Monkey

My very good girlfriend, Jaclyn, invited Chris and I out to celebrate her birthday last weekend. I was super excited because, well, let's be honest, I don't get to go out and do "grown-up" things all that often right now ;) So, we dropped the kiddos off at my parents house for the night and head to Funky Monkey, a new-ish restaurant on Mills. I've heard rave things about this place - how cool the atmosphere is, how great the food is, what an up and coming hot-spot it is...you get the idea. OKAY - first of all, we drove right past the place like seriously 3 times. THEN, after we finally spot the tee-niny little yellow building next to a gas station, we notice that there is only valet parking. Well, Chris doesn't have any cash, so we park across the street, down nearly two blocks. I shimmy my rear-end across Mills in my (now infamous **see high school reunion post below**) black peep-toe heels and we finally make into the restaurant about 30 minutes late. All is well...... Jaclyn looks beatiful, all her friends and family are there, hugs ensue, drinks are ordered...... As we're nibbling on our garlic edamame, Chris points out how strange and annoying it is that there is a GIANT flat-screen TV right in front of his face, playing the food network (with no sound, natch). Since we are there for a semi-private party, Chris calls the manager/owner over and politely asks him if he would mind turning it off since no one seems to be watching (there were all of 3 other tables occupied that night). So, here's his response (insert jerky, tight-wad tone of voice here) "No, I will not turn the television off, it's part of our atmosphere and well, I just won't turn it off, no, it's staying on." And, with that, he turns his little caboose around and heads back to the...well, I don't know where he went, but he went "off" somewhere. So, another guy from our table goes back to ask him, yet again, if he could PLEASE turn the television off since NO ONE else is watching it and it actually does not suit the urban-chic atmosphere at all. More snarkiness is exchanged on the part of the manager/owner but eventually the waitress comes over and flicks off the TV. So, we have a very nice dinner (well, the food was at best pretty good) and go along our merry little way to continue the birthday celebration elsewhere. Unfortunately, Jaclyn was sick and had to go home early to try and recuperate. Yes, I said try to recuperate. She was nestled all cozy in her bed until she got a very disturbing phone call from our friend Amanda. Apparently, Mr. Manager/Owner had the nerve to call Amanda the next morning and accuse our party of stealing their remote control! Not only did he accuse her of grand-theft-remote, but he threatened to call her boss and tattle on her!! (Amanda works for a liquor distribution company that sells to Flunky Monkey). So, Amanda calls Jaclyn, who promptly calls her dad (who was also at dinner) who promptly calls Mr. Monkey to give him a peice of his mind (we figure our table spent approx. $1000 collectively). Somewhere over the course of their conversation, Jaclyn's 88 year old grandmother pipes in and says "remote control? I have a remote control in my purse"....... How it got there, nobody knows, but Jaclyn and Grandma had to drive to Flunky Monkey to return the remote control and end this nonsense once and for all! So, I promised I would blog about it to let all my faithful readers (haha) know that if I had to give this restaurant a review, it would be a bad one. If it weren't for jerky-pants, I probably would have recommended it and seen most everything in a better light. Here is the restaurants website in case any of you are curious: http://www.funkymonkeywine.com/ . If you feel so inclined, check it out for yourself and if you experience service as bad as we did, drop them a line and let them know.

Well, at least Jaclyn sent me really cute picture of us to commemorate the evening! HAPPY BIRTHDAY JACLYN!!!