Nicole's Last Mutual Lunch

It's a work thing that started when we moved offices to Queen Street. The Mutual Street diner is a few blocks up and quickly became the Friday lunch place. The waitresses are now on a first name basis with Scott and Nicole, the only production crew members that frequent the joint regularly enough to have the pleasure. Sadly, Nicole is moving to Montreal and won't have access to this Toronto gem any longer.

The Mutual has the sort of waitresses that would beat you with their handbags if you stepped out of line. Chuckles, our favorite, has enough dark eyeliner to be confused with a quarterback on a football team. Her nickname is based on Nicole's Hell's Angel neighbour who one day showed up at her front door with a police scanner to request her help with the words: "Nicole, I'm not an educated man but I've done a lot of livin'." He handed her the manual to the scanner and Nicole, good neighbour that she is, read it and showed him how to use it. Awwww. Chuckles, the waitress, bears such a resemblance to the biker that she now shares the nickname with him (without knowing it).

While everyone else was eating proper diner food I ordered the Greek salad. Big mistake. It was basically iceberg lettuce, feta cheese and one olive. I ate the cheese off the top and tried leaving the iceberg behind. This move on my part was greeted by Mama Waitress with the hairy eyeball. She stopped refilling the water glasses at the table to size me up and look me up and down! Then she got me a white styrofoam container, packaged the iceberg up and gave it to me to go! I was scared, I had to take it with me or else risk never returning. My water was not refilled.

Then Mama Waitress turned around to deal with a "there's a hair in my coke" complaint. Her response was simple "it's probably yours, dear." She did get the girl (I mean it, girl, not woman) a new coke in a can, no glass.

There's a real classy joint across the street from the Mutual called Mounties. We've been admiring the place for years and in honour of Nicole's move we will have drinks there on Monday night after work. Everyone's welcome. It's on the southside of Dundas Street at Mutual. There are no guarantees that this bar passed the inspection by the health board but there will likely be pros and down on their luck locals to hang with. See you there!