Thursday, July 06, 2006

The restaurant, part II - one sauce fits all

When our server was telling us about the restaurant, the first thing she described was their signature sauce, which was on the table when we arrived. It was a red sauce, served in a small silver gravy boat.

"This is our Shebang Sauce. (Meanwhile, we're all thinking, "Shebang? That's the best you could come up with?") It's a tomato based sauce with horseradish root, honey, and assorted spices. It's great on everything. Try it on your dinner rolls. It's also great on salad, steak, and seafood."

We were a little skeptical that any sauce, much less one called Shebang, could be good on that many things, but we tried it. It tasted exactly like a mixture of cocktail sauce and barbecue sauce. Classy, huh? We didn't like it on the dinner rolls.

We each ordered a salad with our meal. I had a lettuce wedge, which is a wedge of iceberg lettuce (hence the name) with bleu cheese dressing on top. $9. G and T each had the tomato and onion salad. In my experience, this type of salad usually comes with a balsamic vinegar dressing. Not at this place. Evidently $6 only buys you three slices of tomato and one slice of onion. No dressing of any kind.

T asked if there was any sort of dressing on the salad, and our server cheerily replied, "No. Try the Shebang Sauce! You'll love it!"

G tried it, but, in fact, he didn't love it. It seems odd to eat a tomato-based sauce on a tomato. There's just something wrong about that.

At some point during the meal, the server came to check on us.
"Have you tried the Shebang Sauce?"
"Yes."
"Did you like it?"
Loooong pause. It appeared that no one was going to step up, so I finally squeaked out a tentative "yeah." G then mentioned that it tasted a lot like cocktail sauce. She apparently took this as a compliment.
"Yes, it does have a little tang to it."

Yes it does. Just like barbecue cocktail sauce.

*I just visited the restaurant's website, and it turns out I've been spelling the name of the sauce incorrectly. It's Shabang! Sauce. Or SHABANG Sauce. It has "attitude and flavor." But I'm sure you could tell that already by the exclamation point and the all caps. You can order it from the site - six 12 oz. bottles for $59.95. "Pour it on salad, steak, seafood or anything your lusty heart desires."

I can assure you that my lusty heart does not desire any Shabang! Sauce on anything. Except maybe shrimp cocktail.

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