A RESTAURANT REVIEW

My immediate reactions approaching the Global Grill on the second floor of the 1st Baptist church in downtown Fort Lauderdale were: 1) "WOW!" 2) "This is a perfect argument for churches to NOT be
tax exempt!" and 3) "Why is there anyone homeless and/or hungry in Fort
Lauderdale?", but this is a review of the restaurant and not a political post.

John,
who lives at Gateway, does a lot of volunteer work at the church,
especially for their world famous Christmas pageant--more about that in
part 2--had suggested that Allen and I try the restaurant on one of our
Wednesday lunch outings. One of the benefits is that, in the middle of
a big city, the church has a free parking lot right across from the
church on a very desired, and expensive, piece of property, taht is tax free.

Picture the lobby of a luxurious hotel, or the dining room
of a 5 star hotel, and you will have some idea of how this restaurant
looks. There are beautiful dark tables surrounded by red, deep
comfortable armed chairs and about a half a dozen booths with high
leather backs.

There
is no table service. You go up to a counter and order your food from
Joe. There is an ever changing menu up on the wall and one on the
counter, all the modern conveniences that technology offers, except a
robot server, including 2 large HDTV sets up on the wall, one set to
CNN and the other to Fox.  We got our own drinks, sat where we wanted
to and eventually Millie brought the food to our table.

Allen
had  chicken salad on a croissant ($6.50) and I had a chicken wrap
($7.50) and we both had diet sodas ($1.50 each) with the total bill
coming to $17 as, I guess because it is in a church, there is no tax as
in regular restaurants and, without table service, no tip which Joe
said wasn't allowed. The food was served with a fruit cup on the side,
tasty and a good portion. The surprise was that since it was our first
time eating there we were to get a free dessert!! While Allen had a
sugar free cookie--which certainly didn't look or taste sugar free--I
had an excellent piece of carrot cake.

The
surroundings are certainly plush, the food good, the prices reasonable
but I don't think we will go back there as I like to be waited on and,
in a sense, felt it was wrong for the church to have such luxurious
surroundings when just outside there are homeless people and hungry
children.

Part 2 tomorrow--the world
famous Christmas pageant--the city long block catering room--the
humongous auditorium--the men's restroom!!!--pottery--walking around inside the church