I do the stupid things so you don't have to.

JoDee and I decided to go out tonight for our anniversary. Since she had a hankering for something not pasta, we decided on heading to P.F. Chang's for dinner. At the desk we were told we'd have about a 45 minute to an hour long wait. Fair enough; after all, it is a Saturday evening. So, we waited...

...and waited...

...and waited...

Soon, it looked like an hour-long wait was generous, as people who apparently know how P.F. Chang's worked were not only escorted before our eyes to tables, but were leaving before we were even seated. Apparently P.F. Chang's has reservations, so making a reservation beforehand is the only way to get through in measurable time. We decided finding food was more important than the P.F. Chang's experience (and Chang-sauce for that matter) and bolted. I was half tempted to see if the "drop in any mailbox - postage guaranteed" would work, but decided to give them their pager anyway. (I wonder how much they have to allocate for postage for pager return on their balance sheet).

So, an hour plus into no-food left us with few options for where to go to eat. Do we go somewhere else nice to eat and take the chance that we'll be in another hour-long queue, or just find somewhere that has feed-bags at the ready for us to partake in?

This may be a well known fact to everyone else but us, but apparently P.F. Chang's has a small restaurant chain called Pei Wei. Pei Wei makes no pretensions about itself; you walk in, order your food at the counter, and they bring it to you when it's completed. What is amazing about Pei Wei is the food is excellent, cheap, and showed up before we had a chance to finish off our 8 crab rangoon. Yep, it's all the yummy tasty of P.F. Chang's, minus all the things that drive you nuts about trying to get P.F. Chang's. It's the quick-and-dirty P.F. Chang's, and highly recommended.

If only they had that yummy Chang-sauce.