Can't Fail

I went salsa dancing tonight and Jim stayed in the car while I did that. I wish he would actually join me, but he says the compromise is in him riding in the car. Anyway, afterwards, we went to Rudy’s Can’t Fail Café, a restaurant owned by one of the guys in Green Day. It’s conveniently located right around the corner from salsa, so odds are we’ll be going there again.

Even though it was a Thursday night, the place was packed and we actually had to wait a few minutes for a table. It’s clearly frequented by Green Day fans, as the majority of diners were wearing black skinny jeans, leather, and silver spike jewelry. Although both of us like rock music, we hardly have the look of such and therefore stuck out quite badly. The restaurant itself fell into the category of diner/dive. There was absolutely nothing attractive about the décor, and the only unique aspect of it was the long display of Barbie-esque dolls lining the main dining room dressed in various diner outfits and sporting Rudy’s “flare.”





We ordered nachos with vegetarian chili to start and Jim got a $1 bottle of Bud Light (the standard post-9 pm price). For our mains, I went with a Veggie Club with a salad and Jim got the double burger with fries. Our nachos came out surprisingly quickly, and in fact, in less time than it took to get the order in with our essentially absent waitress. Although the chips were on the stale side, I appreciated the vegetarian chili. It was pleasantly spicy and added good flavor to the nachos. The guac was strictly average, but the fresh tomatoes and chili made up for that. Overall, I liked them, as did Jim.



I didn’t understand what a triple decker sandwich was until our waitress brought out my meal. It happened to be three slices of bread with avocado spread, sprouts, red bell pepper, lettuce, onion, and tomato. The salad was fresh greens with a sesame soy vinaigrette. So good. My sandwich was quite tasty, and I liked that they lightly grilled the whole wheat bread. And the size of the sandwich was definitely a good deal.



Jim’s burger was smaller than I expected. But he had a nice, large pile of fries that I sampled and liked. The burger was cooked to his expectations, and the toppings were placed on the side just how he likes it.



If it wasn’t for the completely horrific service we received, I would have liked the place. As it is, I’m completely willing to go back and try again. The menu was quite extensive considering the establishment, and there were a number of vegetarian offerings that deviated from the normal Garden burger deal. Jim wants to try the Thursday night special, which is 6 cheese mac n’ cheese.