The Mama Rosa Hate Parade

photo: Jacqueline Wasilcyzk for Zagat BuzzOk, so me, Greg-n-Foreign Dude went to Mama Rosa on Sat night for dinner...we were excited, and smiling, and genuinely hoping to find a new fave Park Slope spot. I swear.

Instead, I found another place to add to my growing list of "Places that Can Go Fuck Themselves Right In Their Fucking Faces."

Before I get into, I should say that the food was mostly pretty good. Not life changing or anything, but good. If you don't care about anything else, then stop reading and move right along to baby fucking baboons or something. If not, buckle your seatbelts, cause I swear I couldn't make any of this up if I tried.

We arrived to find that the place was PACKED. And that to me is always a sure sign of a good restaurant. There was only one table left in the joint, and it happened to be located right in front of the verrrrry loud (but great) band they had playing. Halfway through the meal, we realized that the place was "packed" due to the fact that some bitch was having a birthday party there, and she had invited 78 people to celebrate.

Some dude in a sparkly crystal necklace (and I'm talking like spiritual Spencer Pratt crystals) came over and told us they were offering a free Margarita or free Sangria with our dinner. Rad! They don't have their liquor license yet, so in the meantime its BOB (and I guess they're allowed to give you liquor, but you can't buy it). But crystal dude wasn't our waiter...our waiter was wayyy weirder.

He brought over some chips (which, again, were quite good) and salsa. The salsa was in a little dish that was literally the size of one of those soy sauce dishes you get when you go for sushi. There was approximately enough salsa for one half of one chip. We asked for some more, the water looked at us confusedly...like he was so utterly and deeply shocked that we were asking for more salsa, he was srsly behaving if that was the first time in the history of the universe he had heard such a request. He walked away from the table, and when he returned he brought us salsa in something that looked kinda like this:

This bowl of salsa was so gigantic, it barely fit on the table. Like, there was no possible way we could have consumed that much, even if we each started sucking that shit through a straw. Ok, but whatevs. We were still hungry, and we were dying to place our order.

We told weird waiter that we'd like to start off with an order of guacamole. He responds with "uhm, we just ran out of avocados," followed by a blank stare. No apology...no admission that running out of motherfucking avocados is the most ridiculous thing that we have likely ever heard of in our entire motherfucking lives...just a blank stare. I responded with "wow, that's pretty unusual for a Mexican restaurant, huh?" BLANK STARE. Uhm, ok, so no appetizer for us! Yay!

At least we still had 11 gallons of salsa to keep us busy.

Greg ordered Empanadas, and Foreign Dude and I ordered a chorizo burrito and an order of chile relleno that we were going to split. We ordered our food at approx 8:10. I know this cause we met Foreign Dude there at 8pm.

The minute weird waiter walked away from the table, I said to Greg and Foreign Dude: "you better watch every dish that comes out of that kitchen...if someone...ANYONE sees an avocado, btchz are going down."

By 8:35, our glasses of water were empty, our Sangria was long gone and we were all just hungry as fuck. We looked over to our right and we noticed weird waiter and crystal dude standing out on the street. Like just hanging out there. They weren't smoking or anything, so I guess they were just taking a break...like in front of all the people whose glases of water were empty and dinner was not on the table.

Meanwhile, birthday girl has organized an imromptu dance party out on the street and the band is none too happy to oblige. How an angry neighbor has not called 311 to complain about noise yet, I have no earthly clue. I was getting so angry, IIIII was about to call 311.

Then a black Escalade drives up in front of the restaurant, and weird waiter goes to meet the car. It looked like a drug deal (though I'm sure it was not), but the windows were tinted, and whomever was driving the car started pulling away while weird waiter was still standing and talking to them. And then weird waiter rolled on by us again with like 9 tupperware containers filled with salsa...and the Escalade sped away-- the whole thing was just bizarro x a million billion.

5 mins later, it happened. I look up, and see weird waiter, walking right on by us WITH A BOWL OF MOTHERFUCKING GUACAMOLE. There is no mistaking this shit people...it was guac. By now it was around 9:15. We did not order appetizers...we did not order a souflee, and yet nothing was on our table except for the giant vat of salsa (all the chips were way gone by this point, of course). We all kept staring at the bowl of guac with our jaws on the floor. I mean, like we didn't speak for 2 mins b/c we were just staring these 2 poor, guac eating innocents down as we sat there getting as angry as an ex-Gorilla coffee employee.

Weird waiter had been back to our table exactly ZERO times in this hour plus to say something like "SO sorry for the delay! There was an explosion in our kitchen and our chef lost an arm...due to this, all of our dinner orders have been delayed." We got nothing.

This, plus the guac sitch had us all in a rage. We wanted to let loose, but decided at that point that we may as well wait till our food came to ensure that no one took a piss in it. Ten mins later, when our food still had not arrived, Greg suggested we just get up and leave. I was more tempted than I ever had been in my life to do so (could have just walked across the street to Tomato & Basil and had a slice of pizza), but at that point I was just curious to see how this shit would all play out.

At 9:27pm, one hour and 27 mins after our asses arrived, our dinner got to the table. At this point Greg is BUSTING to say something about the guac, so he goes (to weird waiter): "uhm, I'm a little confused. Because you told us there were no more avocados and yet we saw you bring out guacamole to the next table?" Dude looks us straight in the face and says "that's becuase we got a delivery of them, so now we have some." THAT'S ITTTTTT. No "I'm sorry." No, "can I bring you something else on the house?" Just duh: we didn't have avocados and now we do...so wtf is your point????

I assume the "delivery" was that Black Escalade, but I didn't see any avos walking by, so who the fuck knows.

We ate. Food was fine...certainly not worth what we had to endure to get it, but still, it was pretty good.

At this point, all we want to do is leave. We ask for the check. Two mins later, the waiter arrives at our table with this, which he puts down without comment:

This pic is blurry, so let me tell you wtf we're dealing with here. This is a piece of flan, covered in whipped cream, chocolate syrup and rainbow sprinkles. UHM, afl;sjfljsa;lfjslfjsdljfsal;fj!??? I don't know shit about shit when it comes to food, but I DO know that you don't dress up a piece of flan like its a piece of goddamned birthday cake! Also, weird waiter, do you think you could give us one little measly line about how you're sorry our night was such a fucking shitshow at your restaurant!? But nooooooo. He just dropped off that Flan sundae and scurried away. I mean, I guess that deserves a c+ for effort, but also hunh?

So yeah, that was pretty much it.

That night will mos def go down as one of the strangest restaurant experiences of my life.

If you're reading this Mama Rosa, you should know that weird waiter, and his crystal necklaced friend need a serious tude adjustment. You should also know that setting up a band out on the street with an amp in Park Slope at 11pm on a Saturday night will get your whole joint shut down. And finally, you might want to note that Key Food on 5th ave is open 24 hours a day late...I'm quite certain that they sell avocados.

Anywayzzzz...needless to say, I won't be going back.