If restaurants are Superman, my mother is kryptonite. No matter how reliable a restaurant’s food and service is, my mother can show up and the whole place just goes to pot. It’s as though they can sense her hunger, and it scares them. She came to visit me for a weekend recently, and we decided to visit my favorite Mexican restaurant for supper. I am not exaggerating when I say I have dined at this particular establishment at least twice per month for two years and have never had a bad visit – until that night. The service was slow, the margaritas were watered down, and the caramel sauce on her dessert (they’d run out of bananas for her first choice, so she ordered a consolation prize) had an “off” flavor. I can’t actually remember the last time we went out for a meal that didn’t end in some sort of culinary disappointment. One thing is certain, if you go out to eat with her, you WILL come back with a story to tell. I won’t even get into the time she made our waiter cry at a local steakhouse. Poor guy.

– Tiffany Blair