The Saturday Dining Conspiracy ate at DonDon Japanese Fire Bowl by SOSU.
Well, we planned to, anyway.
DonDon is in one of those mixed use residential/retail on the first floor developments that replaced something more worthwhile on Burnet. I disremember exactly what.
Three of us got there at very close to the same time. We were confronted by aggressive parking warnings:
Now, I resent the fact that too many places these days want to assume that 1) I have a smartphone, b) My smart phone is charged, and III) that I’m willing to use my smartphone to register for parking/order off their menu/do basic things and submit myself to their tracking. But setting that to one side for the moment…
This is the screen we got from the R2Park site after selecting the name of the center.
When we selected “visitor parking” (there was no other option), we got:
There was no access code. Anywhere. I tried installing their app, just as a test, and got the same result.
Two out of the three of us went inside DonDon to explain the situation and ask them what to do. They had no idea. They knew nothing about the parking setup.
None of us, including Lawrence, wanted to risk having our cars towed. So we bailed on DonDon and went instead to Ichiban instead. They were just up the road, they’ve been around forever, and while they have an awful parking lot, it didn’t require any registration or smartphone usage. And it was good.
So, congratulations “Marq on Burnet”. You managed to deprive your tenant, DonDon, of over $200 worth of business on a Saturday night (and they were not busy when we went in: just the opposite, as a matter of fact), and you’ve managed to arrange things so that I will never go back to DonDon or any other business in your retail center.
I hope you’re happy.