My wife and I had previously eaten at a restaurant in Newcastle, Wyoming, about a year earlier, before it changed management, and had quite enjoyed it. This time however ...

We walked in, and I noticed that the restaurant was divided into two rooms, both with tables. I assumed that the second room was nonsmoking, and so I asked for us to be seated in the nonsmoking section. Turns out BOTH sections were smoking. Stupid; the place was much less than half full, and several diners did not appear to be smoking, so it is not like it would have been a big deal for them to segrate their two rooms.

We ordered; I ordered the ribs special and my wife ordered a pasta dish. Both came with salads, and they were brought quickly. We got done with the salads, and waited, and waited, and waited...

I am addicted to Survivor, and expected that the meal would get done in time to for us to watch it. It became obvious, about ten minutes prior to the show start time that this would not happen, since the main dishes had still not been brought. There were several tvs in the room, all of which were tuned to a program on the USA Network that was ending. My wife asked if the channel could be changed to the CBS station. Nope, it couldn't (despite the fact that no one seemed to be watching the tvs). She informed us that the manager controlled the tvs, pointing to the man who was at the bar. Well, I hadn't thought that she carried the remote around with her! I asked her if she could check with the manager. She said she would, but nothing ever happened. I was bored waiting for the food to arrive, and so I watched her wander around. I never saw her talk to the barkeeper.

In this restaurant, I noticed that the cook, who was wearing a tanktop and looked none too clean, put dishes under heat lamps until the servers took them to the tables. About the time of the tv change request, I noticed that the cook put plates under the heat lamps that looked much like ribs and pasta. And those dishes stayed under the heat lamps for about ten minutes. Finally, our server noticed that dishes were under the lamps, and took the pasta dish to my wife and an empty plate to me. The server said to my wife words to the effect of, "our cook can't read! Would you mind splitting this while I have him cook up your husband's meal?" Huh? I hadn't ordered pasta; I had ordered ribs, presumably the ribs that had been under the heat lamps for over ten minutes. Turned out I was right ... the cook could read and had prepared our orders correctly ... it was just that our server couldn't remember what it was that I had ordered; she thought that we had both ordered pasta. So I finally got my ribs. Mid-way into our meal, the cook and the server got into an argument about what to do with the extra serving of pasta he had just finished cooking...

FINALLY, we were done and were ready to get out of there! The restaurant displayed the standard credit card logos on its door, but when came to the counter to pay, the women that was stationed there did not know how to do a credit card transaction. She called over one of the two servers, who also did not know. They called over our server (who may have had alzheimer's when it came to remembering orders, but did know how to do a credit card transaction).

The ribs were pretty good, and my wife enjoyed the homemade rolls. But for some reason, we did not leave a tip.