Here’s an interesting story about a woman who has been eating at the same restaurant for the past 20 years. She goes once a week and orders the same thing—something she made up that’s not even on the menu.
Now that’s customer loyalty.
The closest that I’ve come to that is eating at ZivaZ about three or four times a month. It’s walking distance to my house, and the food and service is light years beyond other fast-casual restaurants. I have a favorite—the eggplant Milanesa—but have recently tried other items on the menu, too.
Do you have a restaurant that you regularly patronize and if so, for how long and how often, and what do you order?
This article appears in Jul 20-26, 2006.
While I don’t frequent any restaurants daily, here are three dishes at local joints I find myself salivating over at random times. In no particular order: 1) A Joe’s special with meatballs at Mama Louisa’s. 2. The steak sticks and the tortilla soup at Terra Cotta. 3. The Barrio tostada at (guess!) the Barrio. Also, I’d like a moment of silence for the loss of Romi’s (Sixth Avenue just north of Valencia Road) and their awe-inspiring tortilla soup. It’s been seven months since Romi’s closed, and I still find myself sniveling that it’s gone.
My husband and I often head over to Ha Long Bay, a Vietnamese restaurant in El Mercado at Broadway and Wilmot, where we always order the Bun with Lemongrass Beef. It’s like heaven in a bowl—the perfect combination of cold things (sprouts, cucumber) and hot things (grilled beef and rice noodles). And about every other week, I get tortillas at Lerua’s.
Sachiko Sushi at Wilmot and Speedway, most Friday nights for the past 10 or so years. We used to inevitably get the Small Tray, but we got tired of them making fun of us for being so predictable, so now we try to surprise them by ordering a few different things: Nabeyaki Udon, curry fried rice, egg rolls. We also dangerously mix up the sushi: recently we’ve been recklessly scarfing the Blue Crab roll. However, our drink orders are so predictable that they just say, “The regular?”, we nod, and a glass of Chardonnay and a large sake simply appear.
We know it’s pathetic to go to one place so often, but it’s a half-mile from home, we like it there (Nobody knows your name, but they do know your order!), it’s always good, you walk out full but not regretful, and — it’s in the same strip mall as Trader Joe’s, so we kill two birds with the same stone. (Friday night is THE time to shop TJ’s — light crowd and no recreational shoppers (Oh look, Martha — peas.)) We often run into other Sachiko diners at TJ’s, following the same oh so practical path. Then it’s home to unload the frozen stuff and then on to Casa Video.
We are intensely boring people.