Papa John's

Papa John's is an American pizza restaurant chain that just opened a restaurant here in Chengdu. So since the opening day was today Li Min, Aaron and I (Kelly was supposed to come too but she was apparently feeling sick, and a few other friends of Aaron's should have been there too but they went earlier) went there for dinner, a late dinner as it turned out.

In the afternoon Li Min tried to call them to reserve a table for the (at that time) four of us, but they were very reluctant to take any reservation for us but told her they would call her back, but of course they never did that so when we arrived at 7.30pm the places was already packed and we had to wait for 27 tables before we could get in. I had deliberately starved my self to the occasion and both Aaron and Li Min were really hungry too so we went next door to wait, in McDonald's.

We didn't eat very much, at least I didn't but Li Min managed to get full and I think Aaron had a bit too much too actually, and we spent a too long time there, too long being surprisingly short but I think most of the tables ahead of us had just given up because it didn't take much more than 30 minutes before we had nearly missed our chance to get a table, Li Min managed to argue us in though.

Once inside started the real problems; not so much trouble at first actually, mostly it was Li Min trying to get the most out of everything, which we eventually did and totally too. First was the issues about ordering; they had some special offer that day that we finally managed to order, like a half/half thing where you order two pizzas in one but they only had the discount for a mix of Hawaii and BBQ Chicken, then there was some special deal you could get for their special where they offered a free dessert to it, so we got that too but that on had mushrooms and black olives which we had to ask them to remove (you know I'm picky about that), which surprisingly turned out to be no problem since everything else was.

Then we waited.

And waited.

And waited.

And finally got our pizza, but no drinks (I had ordered Coke,Li Min Sprite and Aaron nothing, please take not).

So we finished the rather tiny 9" Hawaii-BBQ Chicken pizza and had to wait again, at this point we were rather thirsty though so we started asking for our drinks and at least I got my Coke rather quickly after that, but Li Min's Sprite seemed to linger somewhere so we kept asking for it. Suddenly there started showing up classes of water on our table and after some minor commotion and misunderstanding we managed to get a class of Sprite for Li Min, then we got another class of Sprite for Li Min that Aaron took and a few more glasses of water, that I got because my Coke was nearly out already by then.

After being confused for a while we finally got our second pizza and when we had almost finished that we got our second pizza again. Even though they were small it was kind of hard to finish the second pizza twice so I got half of it back with me home now. By this time my Coke was really finished so I turned to my water for refreshment but my water turned out to be another glass of Sprite, this really chocked me because Li Min had actually tried it and confirmed it was only water, MAGIC!

Now we only had two issues left: What happened to our dessert and will we have to pay twice for the pizza we got twice (actually we didn't get the same pizza twice but we have no idea which one was the right pizza and why we had gotten an extra). Li Min had worked really hard to get us some chicken wings for dessert; a while lot of issues about needing a commercial flyer for their promotion to get it, and she had managed to convince our waitress (who was really pretty by the way) to find one for us. So we had to ask for that a few times and then wait for it for a long while too, even though none of us really wanted it but she had so much fun doing that so we just let her at it.

Finally we actually didn't have to pay for the extra pizza, during all the commotion there I think no one knew about it, except the couple sitting next to us who saw us hiding the extra tablet we had gotten, this is also funny because when I got back home and was going to walk into my building I hear a loud grasp to my far left and when I turned I recognized the girl and realized it was the couple from the restaurant (I live about 10km from the restaurant). We finally got the chicken wings too and Li Min took them with her home, fighting with Aaron about who would not have them (I got away from that one since I had claimed the pizza already).