Restaurant Review: Hooters in Columbia, Missouri

When I walked into the door at Hooters upon its opening, I was quickly put on guard. My friend had requested a table be put in my name, and when one opened up, the loudspeaker voice boomed that a table is ready for Dick Van Vector! Well, in some cases, I wouldn't care, but Hooters is somewhere you don't want others to know you patron, even if those others are patronizing it themselves. Perhaps this is why people usually get corner tables and avoid eye contact, except to visually undress the waitresses, or 'entertainers who serve' (as they are legally described).

Anyway, Hooters in Columbia, MO had an impressive arsenal of these serving entertainers; part of what constitutes the entertainment is that they chat at your table longer than you would expect them to do. Actually, it got painful a few times. When a waitress, struggling to carry a large tray and getting yelled at in three directions at once, smiles at you and with shifting eyes, asks you if you like sports, you realize that that question was purchased by her salary and not spontaneously driven by your charm.

Once I ordered my food, I realized that I had become gluttonous in my gut as much as my heart was lusty. Chicken tenders, which I would dip in both Hooter sauce and ranch-the archetype anti-diet morsel, and I doubt that 'free range' was ever a part of that bird's life. On the television were behemoth college football tacklers, tackling to the beat of what was on the jukebox, which was some song by Nelly that, although I couldn't make out all the lyrics, am pretty sure was objectifying women to their detriment.

What happens when you crave glorified fattening food, meet and lust for barely dressed, buxom servers, hear lyrics that tell you to give in to your weaknesses, and drink frosty beers that only accentuate all these vices? What happens is that you have all the needed ingredients to experience some rightly-felt guilt. I may go back, indeed, but will probably do so at one of my weakest moments, sign in under an alias, and ask forgiveness from the parking lot by the exit.