Giving Up Dairy...Queen

There's been a Dairy Queen pretty close to me that I've never been to, until Saturday afternoon. When you have kids, your lunch choices are fairly limited, so you try to mix it up now and then. Plus, I'd expected that the food would be fairly cheap.

We ordered kids' chicken strips & fries meals for the kids, and a mushroom swiss burger basket for myself. I was given two cardboard tokens to present when the kids had eaten this and wanted the included ice cream treats. It's a small place, with seating for maybe 25, and there were just about 10 people there, so I expected our food shortly. Well, ten minutes passed, and we were all getting antsy. I refrained from going up there because I could see through the small window into the kitchen that a girl was clearly putting something together, and the only remaining orders were ours and a family who ordered five minutes after us. I went up a couple minutes later to ask how it was going and was told the food was almost ready by the walleyed female cashier. Well, she was. A few minutes after that, after we'd exhausted looking at the licensed ice cream cakes you can buy (apparently just the same cake with a laminated circle placed atop featuring Spongebob or Spidey or Strawberry Shortcake, etc.) and the curiously-lacking-in-ice-cream overhead menu, an order came up...which was given to the later family. It turns out that after our order was taken by the manager's wife, she went to the bank to deposit money and that order was never filled. Her husband showed up to relieve her, and was very apologetic, and made our meals quickly. I was really annoyed by this point, but what can you do? I told the kids that everyone makes mistakes--I don't want to raise someone who makes others feel like shit for goofing up, and besides, we weren't in a hurry. The burger would have been all right without that faux-swiss, which was so gooey it was like mayo--my mistake. The chicken strips were real breast meat and tasted good, and the fries were very good. The funny thing was that when the manager's wife came over, she gave me a Gift Certificate for TWO FUCKING DOLLARS! I mean, yes, like I said, accidents happen, and I wasn't going to insist the meal be comped, but really, if you're going to make the gesture of making things right, you've got to do better than that! This was saying that for the extra half-hour (plus the fact they're already slower than any other fast food of like quality), they were willing to give me a soft serve cone for free.

Speaking of which, there's a Baskin Robbins-style ice cream display case there, as they have hard ice cream in addition to the soft serve, and the kids immediately locked onto the blue bubble gum flavor as what they wanted for their treat. I'd asked the clerk what the "treat" constituted, and she said either a dilly bar, ice cream sandwich, or cone, so I assumed that included the "hard" stuff. Nope, it was only supposed to be for soft serve, so as I prepared to forget the free treat and buy this stuff, which would cause another 75 cent debit card charge, and use up this fucking gift certificate so I wouldn't have to come back, the manager's wife stepped in and comped the ice cream entirely. Which she should have done in the first place. And that bubble gum flavor was awful--melted almost instantly into a frothy mess, and was full of gumballs my daughter is too young to eat anyway. Yuck. My chocolate mint was fine, just like a grocery store flavor.

Not the worst dining experience, and I was actually kind of touched by this couple trying to make a go of this place, which really has almost nothing special to offer aside from, say, the Peanut Buster Parfait, and takes a long time to get the stuff made. It's not cheap, either--the parfaits are $3.49. Oddly, one of the best things they do, the Blizzard, was not advertised at all in the store. Just big picture after picture of their chicken sandwich and burgers.