Dining Out Around Town Vol I: Denny’s Prime Rib

My friend Pretty Boy Dave (PBD) used to work at Denny’s. Dave has worked quite a few food service jobs in the past (he has been known to say “I hate all people who eat food”), but this one was particularly good.

One of the neighborly things Denny’s does is have occasional Prime Rib specials. The prime rib is cheap ($6 or something), and it is a large portion. Lots of people come in, especially old folks on fixed incomes.

Some time before this, the meat arrives from Headquarters. It is a gigantic lump of stuff that could not have been cut from any animal. Seams of fat circle it, and it is frozen like a Mongolian steppe, hard and smooth like glass. As Dave described it, it’s a type of Stonehenge Plinth of meat, suspiciously regular and large. It is heaved into the freezer and kept there.

On the first day of the special, the Meat Lump is dragged out of the freezer and dropped into the dish sink, which is the only container large enough to hold it. A great clunk is heard. Then warm water is run over it slowly for the entire day. As people request the Prime Rib, an appropriately sized chunk is hacked off the slowly melting meat-berg.

This meat is then microwaved until it is hot. However, at this point it looks like precooked defrosted road accident. Therefore, it is dunked in a vat of boiling “au jus” sauce for a few minutes. When dragged out of this, it is soft, tender, juicy, and just what the victim customer ordered.

Finally the finished product, a lovely slice of hot savory ass Prime Rib, is served.

Dave says that occasionally someone would ask for an end cut and he would have to run in the other room to laugh.

Finally, at the end of the day, the lump is taken out of the dish sink and thrown back into the freezer to become 100% meat-berg again. Since the prime rib special is off between 11 pm that night and 5 pm the next day, it has time to freeze up before it is yet again thrown in the sink and drizzled.

And that’s how nauseating giant chickenheart chunks of mystery meat saved Christmas, kids.