hey hey hey, WHAT is going on here??

when i heard that a "saved by the bell"-themed cafe was coming to l.a., i knew there was a group of my friends who'd be all over it right along with me.  we coordinated via email, text and facebook and as soon as the reservations became available, we booked it.

we had weeks and weeks to plan for our totally awesome outing, and with dailygluttony's help we even managed to coordinate matching t-shirts.  she and lilcee and i attempted to do the matchy-matchy thing and ordered maroon cheer skirts from amazon, but mine never arrived and dailygluttony's didn't fit her properly.  i found a length of fabric in my stash that was the perfect color to make a quick skirt, and took my too-long tee and chopped off the bottom to turn it into a knotted hem shirt.  it started out looking like this:

and ended up like this.

i met up with lilcee so that we could carpool out to west hollywood, and we arrived with some time to spare.  as we made our way towards the restaurant, we came across first nanette, followed by trish and dailygluttony, and finally we ran right into weezermonkey.  she took one look at our outfits and ran back to her car to find some props she had left over from a paw patrol show (hilarious in itself).

before we went inside, we managed to get a couple who was waiting outside to take a group picture of us.

i was so excited to be there that i probably missed a ton of photo ops, but that's okay.  i think i got enough for you to get the git.  as we walked in, we passed a graffiti'd wall and a row of lockers stuffed full of props that the characters on the show would have had on hand.

the restaurant looked just like the one the bayside gang frequented on the show in pretty much every episode.

 and episodes were playing on the screens above the bar.

this row of lockers led to the restrooms, with these signs on the doors to indicate which one was for boys and which one for girls.

there was also a separate dining room (which required a separate reservation, apparently) modeled after the principal's office.

the "museum" was full of memorabilia and props from the show.

we took our seats in the booth we were led to and settled in for our allotted 90-minute dining window.

even the table sported the familiar shapes that were used in the shows opening and closing credit sequences.

menus:

when you make a reservation, you basically prepay for your meal.  it consists of an appetizer and an entree, with sides, drinks and dessert offered at an additional cost.  we decided to order one of each of the appetizers (except the salad - boring), doubling up on the wings and poutine.

they were okay, which we'd anticipated.  after all, this isn't the kind of place you go expecting top-notch food.  here, it's all about the photo ops.  and the peoplewatching.  we were super amused to see two separate parties who were treating their reservation as one big photo shoot.

this was the "kelly kapowski, basically their take on a monte carlo-style sandwich.

i shared it with lilcee, who split her order of fried chicken and waffles with me.

and this was the bacon burger, with the bayside tigers logo to make it extra "saved by the bell"-y.

with the eating part over and done with, we vacated our booth and started making our way around the place to take more pictures.

 a quick visit to the principal's office:

and of course, weezermonkey's and my best attempt at recreating the famous "i'm so excited!  i'm so excited!  i'm so...SCARED!" scene.  this will never stop being funny to me.

we took a couple more fun boomerang videos before we called it a night.

we went outside for a quick group hug, and then we parted ways and headed home.

now time to plan for another super fun GTG!  wonder what sort of shenanigans we'll get up to next.