Too Fat To Eat

Last week I got a call from my cousin's wife asking me to join them for dinner to celebrate my cousin's birthday. Dinner would be held at Dan Tanas, a cool, old school, hip west hollywood, four money sign kind of place. Ever since I saw a picture of Jennifer Aniston coming out of the restaurant, I've wanted to go. This was my chance. Seize the day!

When I arrived at the restaurant, I saw my cousins, my brother and his wife. Reservations were at 9 pm. The current time was 8:59 pm.

Now, Dan Tanas is small. I'm guessing it's for atmosphere that they cram probably a zillion people in the tiny space filled with teeny Beverly Hills women with huge hair. There was not one fat girl in the restaurant. Great. I also notice that the booths are very, very small. Wonderful. Small and cramped seemed to be the theme of the restaurant.

I didn't think the problem would be me not fitting between me and the table, or the fact that it was a booth, what worried me was how we were going to fit 6 people in this tiny booth. I'll give you the run down of the family that was there:


Cousin #1: If he lost 20lbs, he'd be thin.
Cousin #2: Big boy
Cousin #1's Wife: About 5'6" and probably weighs around 120. Fake boobs and nose.
Brother: The perfect child is, well, perfect
Sister-in-law: pregnant and still a 10th of me.
Me: Well, this is my blog isn't it?

I noticed that we had been waiting for a while. My watch read 9:20 and still no table. Then, the matre de came over and apologized, it was going to be a while, but he gave us a round of drinks, so we didn't seem to care. But, when 10:10 hit, we got pretty restless. When cousin #1 pointed out to the matre de that others were seated at booths before us, the matre de responded that since we were a larger group, (as he taps Cousin #2 on the belly), we probably wouldn't fit in those booths and that we were, in fact, waiting for a table with chairs.

Oh My God.

Now, I see that these booths hold 6 people, because there's a group of 6 in the corner...and cousin #1 and wife aren't big, and the perfect child and his wife obviously aren't big, so it was basically my fault, with cousin #2 help, that we were not able to be seated for over an hour.

As Lindsey once touched upon in an earlier post, I don't think I'm as fat as I probably am. I don't feel huge. I'm self conscious about it, but I also see a lot bigger out there on a daily basis. I then looked at my cousin. He's not super huge to me...his pannus couldn't possibly be very big...seriously, what's the problem here?

Problem is I'm fat and he's fat and we're probably about 2 people a piece. That would be trying to fit 8 people into a booth that uncomfortably seats 6. That's a problem.

Long story short, we finally found a table that could accommodate us all. I blew $52 on the chicken marsala which tasted like chicken dipped in maple syrup. Cousin #1 ordered a dish called the Dabney Coleman, who coincidentally was there and still never managed to thank my cousin for ordering his name sake. Needless to say, a fine night was had by all.