Saturday night, Trenton, Luke, Eli, and I went to It’s All Greek To Me for dinner. Trenton and I had been there before for lunch, and loved it. The host/chef/waiter is this big, friendly, bald Greek man with a mustache who inserts “please” two or three times into every sentence. The menu had changed slightly since we’d been there before, and unfortunately, the slight changes completely disrupted our ordering plan. Trenton ordered first and asked if he could get the gyro platter, but with veggies instead of meat. [I don’t know the name of the bald host/chef/waiter, so for clarity’s sake, let’s call him John Stamos.] So Trenton asks for a veggie gyro and John Stamos, keeping the mustachioed smile firmly in place, says no. He can’t make any changes to the menu; management says so. Trenton tried to do a little negotiating, but John Stamos was having none of it. Trenton gave up and ordered the vegetarian platter and some hummus instead.

John Stamos happily rang up his order, please, and Trenton went to sit down. Eli is vegan and after watching the spectacle of Trenton’s ordeal was flipping through the menu, trying to quickly make revisions to his own order, or at least find something else he could eat. When it was Eli’s turn, he inquired about the garbanzo soup—not vegan. The other soup? Not vegan either. Eli politely, but firmly, asked, “then what options ARE vegan?” John Stamos hesitated for maybe a second, before offering him the vegan gyro platter. The same exact menu item he’d just denied Trenton. Trenton was quietly livid and I tried really hard not to chuckle. When he and I had been at the restaurant for lunch before, John Stamos had happily whipped up some fresh eggplant dip, which they had just run out of. This vegan-gyro denying John Stamos was not the same John Stamos we’d grown to love.

Eli chalked it up to the firmness with which he’d asserted his vegan rights. John Stamos didn’t want to lose business or enrage the vegan constituency. I thought maybe it was an issue of miscommunication. Trenton had never said the word “vegan” when he tried to order the veggie gyro, so maybe John Stamos thought he was asking for something completely bizarre and unheard of.

Whatever the case and although it was not exactly what we’d hoped to order, the food was still fresh and delicious. I think John Stamos fell a few rungs, but considering the way Trenton gets treated like royalty at Cumberland Brews, he can probably afford the disfavor of one host/chef/waiter in town.