poka bean

rubino's: where nobody knows your name even though you go there like all the time

I try to bring my lunch to work most days of the week in an effort to save a few pennies and eat healthier food but once or twice a week, my beloved co-worker Krissie (the one who looks like Bo Derek) and I treat ourselves to lunch out. Typically, we head to Rubino's for the deal of the century: a huge slice of pizza and a soda for 2 bucks. Or $2.69 if you add a side of Ranch plus tax which, of course, I always do. I mean, I have no choice about the tax part, but I always willingly add the Ranch.

Our Rubino's lunches have become something of a well-choreographed ritual. We depart the office at 12:30pm sharp and drive the 1/4 mile down the street to the shopping center where Rubino's sits perched between A-1 Mail and a real estate office. We drive in whichever Honda Civic is the most readily available in the parking lot right outside our office...typically mine because I am naughty and like to think the rules of parking in the upper lot four days a week don't apply to me because I'm above the law and invincible and cannot be inconvenienced with parking up top when there are open spaces in the lower lot mere steps outside the office door. Sheesh!

When we enter Rubino's at 12:35, the place is always empty except for a few wayward souls who I can only assume either a) just bought a home in Orange County at the real estate office next door and can now only afford to eat the $2 lunch special, or b) simply enjoy the experience of eating in dead silence turned whirlwind-of-loud-obnoxious-high-school-students turned silence again (for which I don't blame them...it's a real thrill.)

We step up to the counter and each place an order for a Number 1 with cheese and a side of ranch, please, with either the Tall Dark Jolly Man or the Moderately Friendly Blonde Woman and then we move on to the soda machine to fill up our styrofoam cups with Dr. Pepper. We grab a stack of napkins and two plastic knives and then robotically retire to our usual table by the door.

We chit chat and sip on our drinks while we wait for our pizza until NUMBER 43, YOUR ORDER IS READY booms over the loud speaker (and yes, they use a loud speaker in this restaurant the size of my living room with only three other customers present, probably just in case we can't hear them over the subtitled soap opera playing on the TV hoisted up in the corner of the room or the faint oldies music playing in the background which only Krissie's finely tuned ear can pick up on...even when she is deathly ill with SARS or some other odd virus she recently contracted on a visit to China and every ounce of her body including her finely tuned ear is congested with, well, congestion. And puss, if I'm being honest.)

Upon the loud announcement of the status of our Number 1s with cheese and a side of ranch, please, one of us dutifully rises to fetch the meal from the counter. We then use several napkins out of our great big stack to sop up the grease floating atop our pizza. (My mother is now reading this with much wailing and gnashing of teeth. Not because we sop up the grease but because I am eating something that has so much grease atop it that it has to be sopped up. Mom, I totally swear I eat carrots and broccoli for lunch every other day of the week. Promise.)

Next comes the slicing of our giant pieces of pizza into two normal sized pieces which is no small feat when attempted with flimsy plastic knives that must cut through the cheese that is quickly cooling to a solid (more maternal wailing and gnashing of teeth here). Once our slices have been successfully divided, we pray, pop open the side of Ranch (or sides of Ranch as was the case this week cause I totally don't want to get SARS), and proceed to mow down our $2 specials. We munch and dip and swig our sodas and discuss the men in our lives in between bites and over the din of the giant gang of high school students who have now entered the restaurant right on schedule and are being loud and obnoxious right on cue.

After we've finished, we dump our trash and head back to the office for the rest of the afternoon. And after that, it's go home, sleep, eat carrots and broccoli for the next couple of days, and repeat. We are completely predictable. And that's exactly the way I like it.

Posted by Poka Bean at 5:36 PM