The BJ’s Brewhouse Incident
Finding happy hour specials in South Orange County, CA is like trying to find a Geoduck outside of Puget Sound. Presumable good luck turns bad and bad luck turns into early retirement. For when a gentleman is fortunate enough to have a clear schedule, one may find him passed out at 11pm with an overturned glass of scotch and a broken monocle strewn across his abdomen. However, when a gentleman does happen upon a locale that remains open long enough to attract brazen strumpets and other women of the night, he must indulge.
BJ’s Restaurant and Brewhouse offers a wide variety of original beer on tap. The late night happy hour, available from 10pm until close, features tasty 1/2 price mini pizzas and $2.00 off other appetizers. At first glance one would consider this to be “good luck” but as we have just learned, good luck always turns bad.
The fun began when I ordered my Blackened Chicken Alfredo Mini Pizza at 11:25pm. From the ghastly look on my server’s face, I could tell that the kitchen would not be happy with making one more delicious mini pizza. Although this pizza is self contained in its own pan and probably dirties a total of one dish and one utensil, what chef wouldn’t want to consummate his clean-up duties early, get under a vat of sudsy ale, and open the spigot?
In short, my mini pizza came out with the cheese lopsided and oozing off one side which is not the end of the world. The minor meltdown actually occurred with the ever important cutting (or in this case, extirpation) of my pizza. There was but ONE incision 3/4 of the way across my pizza, creating two unequal halves. Let me remind readers that the BJ’s Pizza Cutting handbook (that I wrote last night) clearly calls for TWO incisions perpendicular to each other and intersecting in the abosolute center of the mini pizza.
Alas, there seems to be a new sheriff in town, and he serves this pizza:
In Search of Exquisite Service 
6 August 2008 at 7:25 pm
BJ’s restaurants can be found all through California, and on into Arizona, Hawaii, Colorado, Florida, Indiana, Nevada, Texas, Washington, Oklahoma, Kentucky, etc. etc. It is certainly not “exclusive to Southern California.” I live in Arizona and do a lot of travel for work, I frequent BJ’s across the nation.
Please don’t post information as fact if you haven’t done your research.
8 August 2008 at 7:04 pm
A correction has been made. Do note however that the content of this writing is meant to be satirical, and while we are on a mission to discover exquisite service, we do not guarantee to provide it ourselves.
18 August 2008 at 8:26 pm
BJ’s Restaurant isn’t what it used to be, and they should not be calling themselves a brewhouse anymore. They farm out their beer recipe, to wholesale brewers to be made for them. Just like their food, most of it is made offsite. It’s not fresh!
However since this blog is about service and not food, they do have exceptional service, even though they do not know how to cut a pizza. The staff always seems happy to be there and takes care of you.
I have also had a variety of sizes for slices to choose from when my pizza arrives at BJ’s.