Whitlow's on Wilson, Arlington, Va.

Yesterday, Ryan and I walked down the street to lunch at Whitlow's on Wilson, a usually reliable diner-type place in Clarendon. The food was quite tolerable for what we ordered, but the service? Eh. Twas abominable. That was very disappointing, given the usual tolerable service of the place on previous visits.

Monday is half-price burger day, so that's what we ordered, Ryan a "Smokehouse Burger" with barbecue sauce, jack cheese, bacon, and added grilled onions, and I the standard cheeseburger with cheddar. He had a big bowl of cole slaw and I had their tasty battered fries. Ryan loved the cole slaw, reporting that it reminded him of the slaw at Kentucky Fried Chicken (which from Ryan is high praise).

But the problems? Well, first, it took a long time to get the waitress to come to the table to take our orders. When she finally arrived bearing glasses of water, she took our drink and food orders. The drinks—iced tea and a Diet Coke—never arrived. Ryan also ordered a cup of bacon and potato soup as an appetizer, and it, too, never arrived. Our burgers did come hot from the kitchen, but that's because Whitlow's uses expediters to deliver food and doesn't rely on waiters/waitresses to deliver things to their tables.

No one came back to the table to check on our food. The waitress, who'd been running back and forth past our table a lot had refilled our water glasses once before the food arrived, but otherwise ignored us. When we were both clearly done and our plates had been removed by the busboy, she finally came back to offer the check, but Ryan wanted dessert. He also asked her, "Are you our waitress?" Then he mentioned the lack of soup and drinks, so she apologized and brought us free drinks. He ordered the peach cobbler à la mode for us to split, and it came fairly promptly. If I'd been her, though, I'd have comped the cobbler, too.

The cobbler was okay. It had an oatmeal crumb topping that I wasn't expecting and wasn't my favorite, but it was very standard for things like apple crisp. It also had both ice cream and whipped cream, which I always think a bit of overkill.

Once dessert was finished, once again, we sat there a long time looking for our waitress just to get a check. I don't know why she was so inattentive, because she didn't appear to have that many tables, and other wait staff in other sections appeared to serve their tables much more efficiently. What's more, we had to spend an hour and a quarter just in the restaurant, which is quite unusual in this area of multiple big office buildings and a large clientele of workers wanting to get in and out and back to their offices in less than an hour.

Needless to say, the gratuity suffered. Ryan rounded up to the nearest dollar and left her a 28¢ tip.