Wife said as we left the restaurant, “How was your steak? Mine was a little tough.”
“I think they should give away the food,” I said, “and charge for the toothpicks. They would make more money that way.”
We had just left The Swedish Lemon restaurant in downtown Docile, Minnesota, near the railroad tracks. Answering product-related questions from email messages provides me with points I can redeem for coupons that give me reduced prices for meals at obscure locations. I built up a lot of potential acid indigestion points over the past couple years, and since we'd had coffee at The Swedish Lemon in the past, I figured we were ready for a lunch. When I answer the age question on those email questionnaires, I normally get a response saying I don't meet their requirements. Still, I had enough points for The Swedish Lemon.
The Swedish Lemon caters to a specific clientele, namely, the family of the owners. Just about everyone who came in said “Hi, Grandma” or “Hello, Ma,” and there weren't many of those.
We took advantage of the ambiance by selecting a nice Formica booth near the portable electric space heater over by the toy car collection. Grandma sat on a stool at the counter, where she could receive greetings from the customers and give advice about other job openings to the wait staff. He was looking for work.
We both ordered ribeye steaks, expecting something like a filet mignon,. What we got was a little closer to the hoof of whatever the animal was. When we looked over the menu, we purposely avoided anything fried for fear of aggravating cholesterol levels. When we got our order, we were surprised by the amount of fat that seeped out from under the mashed potatoes.
Our coupon covered the price of the entree, but we needed to meet a minimum billing amount, so we ordered dessert. Turns out the lady in the next booth had made a pie she brought to Grandma, so we chose that. It was lemon, with hardly any grease, and was quite good. No doubt she's not an employee.
It's not often that we get to Docile, Minnesota, but we don't think it'll be meal time when we go there again. The coffee was good. They advertise bottomless cups of coffee. After that meal, we half expected the cups not to have bottoms. They did.
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