She says that if I’d taken her to Spag on a first date eight years ago and maneuvered to sit side by side, there never would’ve been a second. We agree that there’s something very wrong with couples who don’t dine facing each other. My girlfriend points out that the couple in the booth next to us are seated side by side. The busboy, however, has a cold-coughing into his shoulder, using his fingers to scrape scum from a fork. Our waitress is unmemorable, and that’s a good thing. And the mizithra comes with the promise of writing chops-the menu says Homer noshed on the brown butter and cheese pasta while busting out the Iliad-yet the pasta proffers no such inspiration for this writer. The flagship spaghetti is all about dense noodles that could sink a canoe. Sadly, no one shot-puts the too-hot-to-handle bread loaf. The side salad’s iceberg needs to be crisper if it wants to shine with the too-piquant pesto dressing. “If the décor of a whorehouse turns you on,” she says.Ī quick food-critic rundown of the night: an appetizer, Twinkie-sized slabs of garlicky cheese bread surrounding a lukewarm dipping bowl of marinara, scares. I ask my girlfriend if the ambience sets a romantic mood. A bronze lamp with a red-velvet shade lights our conversation. I order the libation of choice of my 7-year-old self, a Shirley Temple, no ID needed. Girlfriend orders a glass of pinot noir, golfer Greg Norman’s vintage, for $7.50. The bar top is sticky with years of syrupy drinks. It’s an hour wait to sit in the trolley-devastating!-and 35 minutes otherwise, which is surprising. None of the hostesses look older than 21, but the bartender also IDs my girlfriend, so age is a funky beast at Spag. There are three hostesses, and I believe it, because a trio seems insufficient to handle the crowd. Waiting area is busier than a Kaiser emergency room. It takes a few minutes of maze navigation to land a parking spot at Nimbus Winery, which houses the Spaghetti Factory in Rancho. Saturday night in Rancho Cordova-and maybe someone will toss a loaf?
It will be an ironic date night at Spag, as they call it. My girlfriend hears this story and agrees to return to the scene of the crime. Anyway, she missed and hit an older man with a comb-over in the back of the head. Or I dodged it can’t remember, it happened suddenly. This set her off, and she grabbed the remaining bread on the table, cocked her arm and chucked it at me. I blurted out the F-word, or something, in front of my mom. I like to tell a story about eating dinner at Spaghetti Factory with my family. Forget Fifty Shades of Grey on February 14: Be Rancho Cordova’s naughty valentine. So why not embrace Valentine’s Day’s mindless capitalism and shameless honeypotting? Instead of Ella, Grange or Mulvaney’s, what’s wrong with The Old Spaghetti Factory? And then, for dessert, a night of strip-club hopping in beautiful industrial suburbia. Hating on the holiday is banal, but indulge me: the prix-fixe dinners even chefs hate, Shari and her damn berries, Hallmark, having to landscape your genital fuzz in hopes of saucy Hollywood coitus (which never goes down, because you stuffed yourself with too much rib-eye and buttercream). We all know Valentine’s Day is the worst. And at this precise moment I realize that Rancho Cordova is the perfect anti-Valentine’s Day destination. Folds them up, breathes on and fogs up the lenses.Īnd then she starts rubbing my glasses against her crotch.
After a while, she falls to her knees right in front of me, flashes those teeth, then reaches to my face and pulls the glasses off my nose. She high-wire dances in those 9-inchers on the stage, decent by only a threadbare G-string.
“They’re actually 9,” the stripper interjects. Three friends accompany me, and I comment to them about this skinny stripper and her skyscraper heels. I’m convinced every strip-club scene from every hip-hop video in the history of MTV was filmed here. The feng shui includes mirrors and blazing white lights and signs in English and Spanish reminding you to tip the dancers. A mishmash of leather and upholstered chairs surround three stages. (Is it seedy because someone maybe forgot to vacuum, or because the women are naked?) Anyway, let’s just say it’s the kind of strip club where there’s a self-serve soda machine, like you’d find at AM-PM, and they give you a red Solo cup with admission. I don’t want to call this spot seedy, because that’s unfair, puritanical and frankly a little sexist. I’m at Pure Gold Showgirls, off of Sunrise Boulevard. Strippers are always giving that look-it’s how they hook you, how they get your wallet open-but this girl seems weary behind those penetrating stares. An obscenely thin girl who looks like linguine in high heels smiles at me with jagged teeth.
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