So when the server at the Moonlight Diner began burping as she was taking our order, I thought, here we go again. No one's going to believe this.
But the burping was just part of the Moonlight madness I encountered on two weird visits to this diner-style eatery a few minutes from DIA. Willie Jordan opened the place in September 1998, and when I ate there a few months later -- I was testing Moonlight's chicken-fried steak, which subsequently earned a 1999 Best of Denver award -- I found excellent downhome food in a casual, well-run atmosphere. Since then, though, everything's gone to hell in a breadbasket.
I discovered this one recent evening when, after picking my family up from the airport, we stopped by for a quick meal. It was just 5:30 p.m., well before any dinner rush, but we still stood in the doorway for about ten minutes before anyone in the nearly empty restaurant -- there was just one other table of diners -- acknowledged our existence. After we were finally seated, another fifteen minutes passed before we were given menus. At about the same moment that we were perusing the possibilities, a party of ten was seated beside us; within a half hour, the restaurant was nearly full. Meanwhile, we were still waiting to give our order and get some water.
When the server at last reached us, she kept putting her hands to her mouth, obviously to stifle a belch. "I'm so sorry," she finally said. "I'm exhausted. I was out late last night, and I had some really bad Mexican food. I'm pretty sick. Maybe I have food poisoning, or maybe I have the stomach flu or something." There was a moment of silence as we all looked at her, stunned, and then she put her hands to her stomach and added, "I'd go home, but some servers didn't show up, and the manager hasn't gotten here yet. So please be patient."
The sickly server proceeded to do the best she could, I guess, under the circumstances. By now it was painfully obvious that the restaurant wasn't staffed to handle a crowd, so we resigned ourselves to being there for a while. Since my previous Moonlight meal had been so good, though, I figured dinner would be worth the wait -- even if it came with a side of stomach ailment.
Surprise! If the service was bad -- and it was -- the food was worse.
In the interest of time, we'd decided to forgo appetizers and asked that our soups and salads be brought with the entrees. The chicken soup that came with my ribeye had been described on the menu as homemade, "the way your Grandmother prepared it" -- but if my grandmother had made this soup, I would have disowned her. It was nothing but chicken broth (which tasted like the liquid from a can of water-packed chicken) with exactly four pieces of celery, one minuscule tidbit of chicken and a few teeny pieces of some green leafy substance that may or may not have been parsley; to make matters worse, it arrived lukewarm. At least the steak had flavor, even if it was too chewy to eat. Also competing for the title of best jawbreaker was the alleged garlic bread, two nubby ends of a baguette that had no discernable garlic and very little butter; I had to hack at the bread with my canines to scrape off a bite. And the real mashed potatoes that came with this meal made that soup seem hot: The spuds weren't quite room temperature, cool enough to kill any flavor.
At least they weren't a health hazard. The fish and chips came with a tartar sauce that was definitely room temperature and covered with a scummy skin; it likely had been pre- portioned but not covered. The fish itself had that funky freezer taste underneath its crunchy, greasy crust that indicated it had been frozen -- but not properly. Still, the medium-thick fries were fine, and while the side of decent coleslaw was also room temp, its vinegar base was safer than a mayo version.
Room temperature would have been an improvement over the frigid center of our meatloaf. When we'd ordered it, our waitress had warned that it might take a few extra minutes, since the kitchen had just made a fresh batch. By fresh, however, we didn't think she meant raw. The already woozy server turned several shades of green when she saw it. "That's not good," she said, whisking the plate away. "I am so sorry." When the plate reappeared -- to the kitchen's credit, everything on it was new, including a hot pile of mashed potatoes -- it held a slice of respectable meatloaf, glazed with a faintly sticky-sweet sauce and smothered in a good, diner-style brown gravy.
But by the time we finally saw that meatloaf, we'd been at the Moonlight for two and a half hours -- way too long for a casual meal, much less a diner meal. So we decided to take the rest of the meatloaf home, and tried to communicate this to the person who was clearing the dishes off our table. But the woman, who'd obviously been called in at the last moment to help out, apparently didn't speak any English, and she headed off carrying the only edible portion of our dinner. As she walked away, a guy who looked like a manager type came over to ask what was wrong, and when we told him we wanted our meatloaf packaged up, he raced into the kitchen. But he got there too late: I watched as the two of them looked into the garbage can together, then continued to watch as they started rooting around in it. (From my lousy seat by the server station, I could see everything that was going on in the kitchen.) What were they going to do, wipe off the meatloaf and bring it back out? We didn't stick around long enough to find out.
We didn't schedule a return visit until we'd been assured that Moonlight was fully staffed. Even then, we brought along a deck of cards and a bottle of antibacterial soap.
Although this time our server appeared healthy, the food was no better. The Moonlight pizza arrived black on the bottom and topped by raw onions (they were supposed to be caramelized), three dime-sized pieces of sun-dried tomato, and none of the goat cheese listed on the menu. "What's goat cheese?" the server asked, then told us it would take half an hour to make our pizza correctly, because "we're too busy to deal with that." No apologies and, we later noted, no reduction on the bill. We did send back our regular cheeseburger, though, because it was more raw than the meatloaf had been. But when we got the burger back, we saw that not only had the kitchen failed to freshen anything on the plate, they'd simply pulled the meat -- ketchup and all! -- off the bun and cooked it some more.
Meanwhile, the three of us made do with the only edible thing we'd been given, a tuna burger that was supposed to be fresh-ground tuna brushed with soy sauce and grilled. But if that was fresh tuna, I'm chicken of the sea. The burger came with brown-edged lettuce, avocado that had turned dark, and something that was billed as wasabe-ginger mayonnaise but tasted like plain mayo. The coleslaw was room temp again -- doesn't this place have a refrigerator? -- as was the potato salad.
As we walked toward the exit, a Moonlight staffer asked us how our meal had been. "Terrible," we replied. He was taken aback. "Well, I hope you come back and give us another chance," he replied, pouring on a big ol' grin.
I'd rather eat a slice of moldy cake.
