Bowie Restaurant Project: A Trip to the Food Court

I was going to append these notes to my review of Bowie's Starbucks, but I realized they were slightly more interesting than that actual review, so they're getting a post of their own.

 I stopped by to see if Asian Chao is open yet. It isn't, but the sign to the left was up. At the bottom it says, "offer expires March 31, 2012." So either they're going to be open by the end of the month, or it's a really lame offer.

The other thing I noticed was this health department car parked out front. The first question it raised was whether it was a bad sign if a place you're going to eat at has the health department out front. Maybe not; it could just be a routine inspection. I was going to California Tortilla instead, so I didn't care too much.

The second question it raised was, hey wait a second, is the health department allowed to park in the fire lane? I e-mailed them that question, and to their credit they got back fairly quickly. Apparently there are circumstances that allow the health department to park in the fire lane, but it didn't sound like this was one of them. They said they'd talk to the inspector in question and bring up the necessity of parking legally at the next day's meeting. Not exactly, "It's going on his permanent record," but it was a response. I'm sure nobody from the health department will ever park in the fire lane again.

The Starbucks review will appear later this week. It turns out the Starbucks in Safeway doesn't serve sandwiches, so it doesn't meet my criteria, and the restaurant total has dropped to 79.