On Thursday, January 23, I took advantage of Dine About Town and had dinner at the Pacific Restaurant at the Pan Pacific Hotel. The restaurant had decent reviews on CitySearch, and since I've been curious about what the inside of the Pan Pacific Hotel looked like, I booked a reservation.

First of all, the restaurant is way overpriced. Entrees were in the $20's, which is high considering the quality of the food is average. I thought the food was similar to the Daily Grill, which is much cheaper. I had the salmon, and it was drowning in oil. The Daily Grill serves their fish this way too. I know some people like their fish drizzled in olive oil, but I find this technique unimaginative and so five years ago.

Secondly, since the restaurant is overpriced, the place was empty yet the hotel was overflowing with guests. Usually hotel restaurants are full of hotel guests, because it's convenient and a guest can charge the food to their room. I don't know if the restaurant was empty because of the bad economy and the visitors are watching their pennies carefully, or that even the out of town visitors knew the restaurant was no bargain.

The only saving grace of the restaurant for me was listening to the few diners that were there. A beautiful, immmaculately coiffed white haired woman was sitting a few tables from me. She looked like one of those older society matron types, with her Bottega Vanetta bag, her silk shirtwaist dress that perfectly matched her green eyes, her rings, her double strand huge baroque pearls and the fine italian wool navy blue blazer with the gold buttons. The silk dress was definitely designer or off the rack designer, probably bought sometime in the 70's, but which still looked timeless and classic.

The society matron had beautiful unlined skin, and was still very thin, but she had all the tell tale signs of old age; arthritic looking age spotted hands, severe lines around the mouth, a crepey neck, clouded eyes, stained teeth, bad eyesight, and of course the lifeless white hair. However beneath the ravages of age, you could telll that this woman was quite the refined blonde bombshell in her youth.

The society matron was crying and telling the french waiter that his accent reminded her of her french husband. She had lived in France with her husband during world war 2, and had kept a journal of her experiences for her grandsons to read. The woman's husband's family had been in banking, and they were killed by the Nazis during the war because they had refused to give up the combinations to the vaults.

The french waiter told the society matron that while he was growing up was Lyon, he had met an old man who told him a story about the Nazi occupation of Lyon that he witnessed. Apparently, there was a Nazi in Lyon nicknamed "the butcher of Lyon". This Nazi, whom the waiter said was caught 10 years ago, had sent a whole school of 40 children to their death at Auschwitz.

Great story huh? The society matron knew all the waiters and they knew her, which must mean she's a regular eater there. I love hearing people's stories. Everyone has such an interesting story to tell, and if you just shut up and listen, you'll discover whole new worlds.

Tomorrow, my review of American Buffalo.