Mandola's Deli

If you guys live on UH campus you've seen this place for sure, it's just across the street from that Kroger on Cullen, where they only have half the things you need at any given time and the dog food and the cereal are on the same aisle which is really weird if you ask me, like what are the trying to insinuate here? Also the lady products are in the same aisle as manly things like motor oil and light bulbs that only men ever need (just kidding guys I have to put new motor oil in my car every six miles ain't nobody got time to wait for a man to do that for me) so that it's super awkward for both genders. So yeah Mandola's Deli is right there, it's this orange-y brick building with a picture of Italy with the Italian flag superimposed over it. I always thought it was a front for the Houston branch of the mob, I had no idea it was like a real restaurant! That regular non-mob people could go into! Turns out though, anybody can go into a mob restaurant, it's just people will look at you the whole time you eat your meal and if you overhear anything you'll end up in the trunk of your own car, floating down the river. Pretty scary stuff.

So yeah Mandola's Deli has been there for like a million years, like 38 or something. Anyway you go inside and it definitely looks like it's from an earlier era, before there were arbitrary critics running around, looking at people's table and chair sets and judging them based on what they got. Because their table and chair sets are real boring, guys. Like one step up from a folding set. Except I think that maybe the folding set is better, as maybe they look boring but at least when your roommate gets a new kitchen set off of Craigslist, you can put the folding seat in the closet until you remember to get rid of it. These tables and chairs, you cannot do that, unless it's a real big closet that I wonder if they'd consider renting out for not too much money as my lease expires soon. -14 I don't want you to think that I have a huge problem with boring tables, the only thing is, they only have four tops, so if you came in for instance with a group of eight because your friend Jess is back in town from St. Louis for the week, then you're SOL and have to push tables together in a nosy way that just draws more attention to you from the mob types that are hanging out there.

But back to the fact that Mandola's Deli has been open so long. Have you guys ever worked for a restaurant that's been open that long? It's really nice, the thing is whenever you work in a restaurant people are always trying to tell you how to do your job, you know, everyone has an opinion these days. But! Thirty eight years is older than most of the people who are always trying to be your parent and boss you around, so nobody can be a buttface to you at a restaurant that old! +29 I'm all about restaurant workers getting treated well as I'm going to be chronically underemployed for the rest of my life and will probably die at age ninety three in a restaurant, answering the phones, my wrinkled crone hands punching away at some new advanced POS system, whispering croak-y questions into the receiver. "Would you like to add a can of Coke to your order?" will be my final words as I slip into the great fast food chain in the sky. In order to make my final days as wonderful as my current ones, I'll make sure that the restaurant I'm slogging away in has been producing food for at least 10 years longer than I've been consuming it. Let's just hope Mandola's Deli is still there when I need it to supplement my Social Security checks.