The "Was It The Chicken Marsala? Story

It was an ordinary day.  Looking at a few scrapbooks I have made over the past 20 years which document vacations Carol and I have taken with friends as well as by ourselves.  As we sat and reminisced about this vacation and that vacation we came upon a trip we had taken in 2014 to Hawaii with friends Jere and Just Sue.  One of the islands we visited at that time was Maui.  While in Maui we stayed along the Ka'anapali Beach coastline at the Ka'anapali Beach Resort which has an address in Lahania, Maui.  At the time it was our third trip to the resort and we talked about the many things we did during our trip that year.  One memory was a visit to a nearby restaurant known as The Paradise Grill which is about a mile from the Resort where we were staying.  

Photograph of the Paradise Grill in Maui, Hawaii.

The grill sat next to a beautiful golf course which gave the restaurant a great backdrop for the open-air second floor.  Carol asked me if I remember the experience we had the evening we visited for our evening meal.  It took some time to be seated, but when we did obtain seats, our friends and Carol and I had a great view of the golf course as the sun was setting in the western sky.  Before long the waitress had brought our drinks and was taking our orders for the evening.  Jere, Sue and I all placed orders with no problem, but when Carol told the waitress she wanted the Chicken Marsala, the waitress looked at her and asked "Do you know what that tastes like?"  Carol replied "Yes."  The waitress matter-of-factly said, "Well, it won't taste like here, because they don't know how to make it."  We all burst out laughing...except the waitress who was dead serious.  Then it struck Carol that the waitress was just trying to help her, so she changed her order to spaghetti and meatballs.  Wow, we wondered how many other remarks she must make to customers of the restaurant where she is employed.  Our meals arrived and we enjoyed our time together, not remembering one think that we ate, except for the spaghetti and meatballs that Carol had.  Carol and I haven't been back to Hawaii since that experience, but if we ever make another visit to Maui and the Ka'anapali, we will certainly never eat at the Paradise Grill.  As I was writing this story I "Googled" the website for the restaurant and discovered a few very interesting facts.  First, it seems that in late December of 2016, three local residents were charged with first-degree assault of a man who was seriously injured at the Paradise Grill.  As I read more I realized that the bar at the restaurant where the assault took place was known for problems.  I then began to read recent reviews of the place and found a rather large amount of negative responses with comments like:  (1) Went there on a Saturday night and the service was horrible; (2) Three people in our group ordered salads and they came after 10 minutes and told us they had no lettuce tonight; (3) One of the employees brought her dog into the restaurant and into the kitchen; (4) We went into the bar yesterday to catch the NHL Ducks play in the Stanley Cup.  We ordered pizza and were told the pizza oven was broken.   When we asked to have the Ducks game on the TV, the bartender said he wanted to watch the SF Giants game instead;  (5) As we were eating, all of a sudden an elderly lady at another table stood up and ran toward our table screaming she had just seen a rat.  An employee managed to put his foot on its tail and removed it in a kitchen pot;  (6) Food was mediocre, drinks just OK, bathrooms deplorable, UFC fight was on TV and all the staff did was watch it, service awful, total dive and being that this place is at the entrance to the Ka'anapali strip I'm surprised this restaurant is still here.  Now, there were plenty of positive remarks, but what hit me as I read on was:  "This restaurant - paradise grill - is permanently closed, Maui!  Wow!  Could it have been the service, patrons, staff...or maybe it really was the Chicken Marsala that was made in the pot that had been used to capture the rat!!  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.