Actually, she didn't so much scribble down our order as circle the appropriate item on her ticket pad. You see, "Vince's Spaghetti" is an apt name. Vince has spaghetti.
That's all; nothing else.
Ok, maybe Vince's Spaghetti and Beer. None of that imported beer, though, like Samuel Adams. Just good ol' Miller and Bud, and Michelob, if you're a little loopy. For the children, there are the Lites.
We entertained ourselves while waiting for our food by developing clever advertising ditties. Vince's Spaghetti, where the dark beer is Miller. Vince's Spaghetti, where "ambiance" is a four-letter word. Get cheap spaghetti at Vince's. Eat at Vince's Groovy Spaghetti Palace, for those special evenings when ketchup and noodles just won't do. Vince's Spaghetti and Beer: The perfect place to take out the trash.
One would think that a place that serves only one dish would relentlessly pursue perfection in their recipe. Alas, one could not mistake the (un)canny aftertaste so reminiscent of the Chef Boy-Ar-Dee chemical plant. You could even taste the tinge of aluminum if you tried hard enough. "Real canned spaghetti sauce, Vince?" "Ah, nuttin' but the best, Clark."
Vince's Spaghetti and Beer. Unpretentious, with a capital U. "Soda" is too cultivated for this place; if you want a Pepsi, you order a Pepsi. In fact, you can dispose of all subtle euphemisms when you pull into Vince's parking lot. You order water, you get water with some ice. You order soup, you get soup with some saltines. You order spaghetti with tomato sauce, you get spaghetti with tomato sauce and some little wandering bits of beef. It's the Conspiracy, we think.
Actually, you get a boatfull of sauce, possibly accompanied by some string-like things that may resemble spaghetti. They could resemble lots of other things, too. Vince sure is pushing that sauce, though. There are lots of things you can do with it. You can not eat it, dump it into one of Vince's special take-home containers, and bathe your pets in it if they ever got skunk-sprayed. You could use it to put up your new wallpaper, knowing the preservatives will never let it deteriorate.
Or, you could eat it, making sure to swab up all the extra sauce with your margarine-saturated bread so you can graduate into the Klean Trough Klub. This, however, is not recommended for the uninitiated.
Parking can be a little tricky around Vince's estate. We managed to squeeze in between the tires of two monster trucks, but we had to sideswipe a black Camaro to get the space.
Weaving our way through the parking lot/public spittoon, we eventually came to the barn entrance, got our ears tagged, and patiently waited for our stalls to open up. Vince doesn't take reservations, despite the fact that it's frequently more congested than an abattoir during the cold and flu season.
This place gets especially crowded during the semi-weekly Monster Truck Madness night in Rancho Cuckoomagoo, and whenever Guns 'n' Roses or Bon Jovi are in town.
One frightfully interesting thing we learned during this excursion was that if you lock yourself in a bathroom at midnight, turn off all the lights, and beat your head with your bloodied fists 74 times while chanting the lightly-seasoned incantation, "Vince's Spaghetti," you'll probably feel pretty stupid when you wake up on the floor with a more-than-mild headache and not even a noodle to your credit. Either that, or you'll actually see a creepy incarnation of the Judds wielding bloody axes, taunting you with Vince's special five-gallon take-home spaghetti sauce buckets, with matching sweatshirts to boot.
"I have fucking grease on my spleen," we yearned to hear someone verbalize while leaving the restaurant. She did, and we were happy.
Hopefully, you don't care where Vince's Spaghetti is. For those of you who do, stop reading our column. It's at 6241 Foothill Blvd., in Rancho Cucamongo. They've also just mutated and expanded to 1206 W. Holt Blvd. in Ontario.