The Pirate a Cappella was hilarious. I was originally skeptical that we'd be having such a group perform at one of our dinners, but it was great. Alas, the dinner itself was not great. Don't patron Wes' BBQ in Providence, RI on the basis of meanness. (The food itself wasn’t bad.)

The woman who arrived with the food was quite late. She said she hadn't been given directions. The truth is that my friend who organized it had given them a very detailed map. The woman arrived alone, and required several of us to help her set up (veeeery slooooowly.) My poor friend attempted to carry a large pan of hot water up a flight of stairs. She had to ask others to help. That is something the caterer should have done.

But then the particularly nasty thing about this woman is that she was rationing out the food and there wasn’t enough to begin with. I was near the end of the line. There were only two pieces of chicken left. I opted for a pork rib, but was eyeing the rice and veggie kabobs. When I started to get a kabob, the woman yelled at me, saying they were reserved for vegetarians. My friend (who was SERVING food with this woman because Wes’ BBQ apparently determined having only one representative would be enough while the caterer said someone else had to help her) intervened to tell the lady there was only one vegetarian in the group. The woman snapped that the order had been for ten vegetarians.

There were only ten veggie kabobs. Do you think a single small veggie kabob would have been adequate food!?

Typically, we order a larger number of “vegetarian” dinners for two reasons: in case there are more vegetarians than had indicated so, and so that non-vegetarians can select a vegetarian option if they are in the mood.

So this situation was doubly-bad. If there had been ten vegetarians, they would be starving. As it was, there were not ten vegetarians, but the woman wouldn’t take my friend’s word for it, so would not allow any non-vegetarians to touch the kabobs.

There wasn’t enough chicken. There wasn’t enough corn bread. And yet we had a plate full of veggie kabobs that nobody was allowed to touch because they had already touched either the chicken or pork ribs and were therefore branded “non-vegetarian.”

Finally, some people approached and pretended to be vegetarian so they could grab some kabobs. Some took them while the woman wasn’t looking.

In the end, there were two kabobs left. Rather than packing them up in the serving containers like the woman had with the majority of the leftover beans and pork ribs, I saw her put them on a plate along with a helping of beans and a pork rib. I have a sneaky suspicion that she ate them. Funny how her taking of a pork rib didn’t mean she couldn’t have a kabob the way it did for me.

Thankfully, two friends ordered some Indian food and allowed me to snag some of theirs since I was so hungry. (Yes, I could have had more than one pork rib, but they weren’t that great. The veggie kabobs looked good; I wanted one.)

Don’t go to Wes’ BBQ.