Ogres are like Onions

Well for the past three weeks boyfriend and I have actually managed to find time when he's not working, I'm not mad stressed with uni, and we've been having a weekly dinner-and-a-movie date night, which has been nice. The first week we had pizza hut (I think I haven't mentioned before that I am a bargain hunter/ voucher fiend, and managed to get a buy-one-get-one-free pizza hut voucher) which was yummy although it was a Saturday night and there were a lot of kids parties going on, then we went to see Tangled, which I loved (well I am not denying it, I love disney films, but I thought Tangled was hilarious and even the bf liked it!). The following week we hit pizza hut again, although it was a week and a half later and we were going for Orange Weds, I had found another 2 for 1 voucher. We ordered two mediums and were given two larges for the price of one medium as they had run out of medium bases- result :). I was still eating that pizza two days later- I usually have 2 slices left from a medium, I had 4 slices left from this one! Anyway that is not an interesting story. We went to see Black Swan and I barely watched it, spent a lot of the time with my eyes shut whispering to C "what's happening?" because I found it quite scary, wimp that I am. It made me feel on-edge and uncomfortable so I didn't really like it, although I could appreciate that it was a very good film and particularly thought Natalie Portman's performance was amazing. She is one of my favourite actresses anyway (and incidentally is vegan, not like the majority of slebs who do it for health reasons, but for ethical reasons).

So that was the prologue to what I really wanted to talk about, which is onions, and how they are like ogres, in that they are ugly and unwanted. OK I am being unfair to ogres. I just really hate onions.

The relevance of this is that for the third weeks dinner and movie, I persuaded C to try something different and go to Chiquitos. As a follow on from last time's 'night out' post, here's the vegan options at Chiquitos (there is no allergen list, I am relying on my server's knowledge and as you will see shortly her trustworthiness is in doubt, so please don't rely on this without making your own enquiries):

Sloppy José Nachos- with the veggie bean chilli, no cheese and no sour cream.

Fiesta Vegetable Wrap- ask for without cheese

Veggie Bean Quesadilla- ask for without cheese

Fajita roasted vegetables/ Veggie bean chilli: enchiladas, burritos, tacos or chichimingas

(No cheese, sour cream, I forgot to ask about the guacamole)

Fajitas with roasted vegetables

Veggie Jambalaya

Fajita Roasted Vegetable Salad (no dressing or sour cream)

I didn't ask about dessert but there's 'Sorbet Margarita' which looks fine (zesty lime & tequila

flavoured sorbet).

So, heaps to choose from, right?

Anyway there were loads of free tables but it was ages til we got seated because they were massively understaffed. Then, when we were seated and served, I asked for the fajitas with no onions (because I don't like 'em). The waitress was like, 'oh, well to be honest the veggies are all precooked together and will taste of onions even if I take them out.' She then proceeded to tell me everything on the menu I could eat. I felt a bit rushed to decide, and went for the Fiesta vegetable wrap, no cheese. So we waited for our food, munching on some complimentary nachos and salsa, and smiling at the cute baby who kept randomly yelling for no reason who was sat beside us, and discussing the laws on statutory rape, as you do when you're a lawyer and a police constable going out together and you disagree on what the law is (the lawyer is always right... ok not always). And then our food came.

The first thing we noticed was the sparsity of chips, which were meant to come with it. There were about 8 chips each. C in particular was annoyed because unlike him I was going to eat a huge bag of popcorn afterwards so he was relying on the meal to sustain him.

The second thing I noticed was the the vegetables in my veggie wrap were not very evident- I could only see one piece of courgette. No sign of the 'fresh spinach', and a pretty lame attempt at roasted vegetables, I thought. Then I started digging in, and I discovered that there were lots and lots more roasted vegetables. Or rather, bits of one particular roasted vegetable. I'll give you a clue, it's round, can be red or white, goes translucent when cooked, makes you cry, bears a resemblance to an ogre... yes, after being told not to go for the fajita in case the surrounding veg was flavoured with onion, I was instead given a wrap containing no other vegetable content than a small piece of courgette and about 10 large slices of onion, plus what seemed to be a whole baby onion.

Did I mention that I hate onions?

Besides the onions, the wrap was populated with rice and beans, so I had the healthy dinner of chips, rice, tortilla wrap and beans.

I'm not really that mad- it would have been much more annoying if there had been meat or cheese or egg in there- but on top of the fact that we were not offered any condiments and she rushed off before we could ask, we were never offered drinks refills although we'd finished our drinks long before the food arrived, and we were just generally waiting around for everything for ages, it was not the greatest experience.

We went to see Paul after, and I liked it. But not as much as Tangled :P.