The Curious Incident of the Hotdog in the Nighttime

So there is one 24 hour diner in Aix. It serves amazing drunk food, so naturally everyone goes there before heading home each night. Unfortunately the service is kinda slow.

The story begins two days ago when a girl, who I will call Anna, was very drunk. We were sitting in a booth in the back and our food was taking forever. Now the fact that the French couple—who had entered the establishment a good 10 minutes after us—had just been served hamburgers (bunless hamburgers might I add) only served to make us a bit, shall we say, restless.

Hungry Hungry Anna was the most restless of all and decided that she could not wait another instant for the pizza to arrive and would just as soon leave and raid her host’s minifridge. Then, out of the corner of her eye, she spied a hotdog sitting on a plate on the bar waiting to be taken to a table.

Now I’m not sure whether Anna was a military brat or had grown up in a combat zone but the army crawl she employed was hands down the sneakiest I have ever seen. She made it right up to the bar (crossing the entire restaurant on the floor) and eased her hand up over the edge. Grasping the hotdog she squealed with glee and sprinted back to the table.

Nobody saw a thing.

The entire staff gathered around the empty plate and marveled at the curious disappearance. The searched every inch of the immediate surroundings but to no avail—the hotdog could not be found.

That was when Anna decided the hotdog—which she had been hiding under the table—needed eating. Of course she was immediately spotted. When the waiter came over to demand and explanation, she insisted that she had ordered both a pizza AND a hotdog and that it was hers. When that didn’t convince him she went with plan b: get rid of the evidence.

She did this by hurling the half eaten hotdog across the room. It landed on the couple’s table. The entire place fell silent.

Luckily we sorted the whole situation out, paid for the hotdog and left, hoping never to return.

But this restaurant IS the only place open late.

It took much convincing last night to get the group to attempt to get un plate de frits, (“what if we were banned?” ) but hunger overcame caution (with the help of some alcohol) and we returned. When we sat down, sure enough, the same handlebar mustache greeted us. We were all startled and began to panic but tried to play it off casually. Strangely, the waiter calmly took our orders. Anna went last and sheepishly ordered a pizza. The waiter paused and looked taken aback.

“Wait. No hotdog?”