Fitz's Bar and Grille, Eagan, MN

A number of years ago I made plans to meet a friend for dinner.  I'm fairly certain it was on December 31.  I arrived a bit late, and found my friend waiting in the front of the restaurant.  He started to tell me that he had been there for some time, but they weren't seating him, and no one had even acknowledged his presence before I walked in.  This, despite the fact that waitstaff had been back and forth through the waiting area.  I made fun of him (we were seated pretty soon after I got there), and told him not to be so annoyed by it, they seated us eventually and the food was pretty good.  Why the big deal over the long seating time?  For that, I got my karmic retribution at Fitz's in Eagan, MN.

Some restaurants offer to seat you, and others expect/invite you to find a seat for yourself.  Some have a helpful sign posted denoting which seating theory they adhere to.  All of these thoughts went through my head recently when I went to Fitz' Bar and Grille and was neither given a table to sit at nor invited to find a seat for myself.  Fitz's is, as the name implies, a bar.  It's connected to a bowling alley, and there is some sports paraphernalia decorating it.  When I was there, there were a few games on, most notable a baseball game in which UConn was losing to South Carolina (or North Carolina, it was hard to tell from a distance.) 

This entire time I was standing near the entrance waiting for some sort of a signal from the staff as to what to do next.  I didn't want to just sit down, that would be rude.  The waitstaff, on one or two occasions, looked directly at me from across the restaurant, and did nothing.  There was absolutely no indication of what the seating policy was, you just had to know from prior experience.  Some places ask at the outset of the meal "Have you eaten with us before?"  Maybe the staff at Fitz's was thinking it.

It's not like I was waiting a particularly long time, it's just that any amount of time spent in meal limbo feels like a long time.  A few people in a far corner were playing pool, though, which added a nice, almost festive atmosphere to the establishment.  The roll of a cueball and its sound hitting the numbered balls can make a nice backdrop to an evening.

I left after 10 minutes.

I have no intention of going back to Fitz's.