We’ve pretty well covered the fact that TCU students are feared and loathed by bar and restaurant owners up and down South University Drive and West Berry Street. My compadre Steve Steward works at a bar over there, and if he says the frat rats are glassware-flinging, non-tipping jerks, I’ll take him at his word. Now that I’ve signed on to get my “second bachelor’s” at Fort Worth’s largest fine institution of higher learning, I’ve started to wonder if I’m immune to the fear and loathing. I mean, Steve and I get along just swell, but am I now one of his and his fellow University/Berry peers’ arch-nemeses simply because I’m officially part of Purple Nation?
Some evidence says yes. To wit: A couple of weeks ago, a group of about 15 of us TCU’ers went to Ocean Rock after a pharmacology final, when many of us found ourselves in need of some kind of medication. Our organizer-slash-den mother actually called ahead to let the restaurant know that we were coming. There was only one guy with us, and although he looks a little like one of Steve’s “Heybros,” he looked on this particular day more like someone’s kid brother than a tumbler-shattering menace.
We arrived after the lunch rush was over, mostly wanting beer, margaritas, and snacks. Despite the 2 p.m. start time, it took the Ocean Rock staff a fair amount of time to seat us — we were relegated by management to the lovely back patio — and even longer to take drink orders. Like 20 minutes longer. When our server finally appeared (and there was only one apparently assigned to us), she was remarkably disinterested in actually serving us. To make things more difficult, happy hour at Ocean Rock doesn’t start until 3 p.m., so the drinks were full-price. The fancy $7 margarita purports to have some magical purple cactus juice in it, but it didn’t seem magical to me.
And, frankly, there’s no excuse for a server to pick up a nearly full bowl of inedible gumbo and not ask what was wrong. Maybe she was new. Maybe she just didn’t care.
“She’s probably just letting us socialize,” said one of my kinder, gentler classmates.
“She can let us socialize and still take care of refilling my drink,” I groused.
Whether the lack of good service was due to the size of the group or the fact that we mentioned we were TCU students, I can’t say. What I can say about that time and that place is that if my cohorts chose not to tip based on the (lack of) service alone, it would have been warranted.
So it was with a little trepidation that I went to Los Vaqueros‘ new, second Fort Worth location, on Berry, for another drown-our-sorrows-in-‘ritas-and-queso meeting. When we got there, we were ushered to the bar (as we said we’d most likely be drinking, not dining). Oh, no, I thought. Not a good sign. They park the loud rowdies in the bar. After scanning the joint quickly, though, I realized that what passes for Los Vaqueros’ patio wouldn’t hold more than a couple of couples, so we acquiesced to our host’s suggestion. Maybe because there were fewer of us here than at Ocean Rock, we were seated and served in a respectable amount of time.
The restaurant offers some bodacious early-evening specials. The $3 Frogarita (purple with purple-tinged rim but no obvious grape flavor) was, at $3, about half the non-happy price. It tasted like a regular margarita except for being, well, a little flowery. Nothing fancy on tap — Miller, Bud, Dos Equis, Blue Moon, Coors, and ZiegenBock — but it’s all pretty cheap. During happy hour, draft beer’s a dollar off, making it $2.25 for domestics (and $2.50 for the Double X).
The server did a good job balancing attentiveness with staying out of earshot during most of our many ‘rita-fueled rants about life, the universe, and whatnot. The bar was scarcely populated, which was odd for a balmy summer evening, but between the big-screen televisions, the cheap drinks, and the tasty eats — nothing goes better with a Frogarita than Los Vaquero’s queso and fresh corn chips — I bet the joint will fill up fast once all of my non-tipping, Animal House wannabe classmates return to campus. Go, Frogs!
– Laurie Barker James
Contact Last Call at lastcall@fwweekly.com.
