worth every penny of that $.98

i've only been to pacific dining car in downtown l.a. once, and that was a whole lot of years ago with my friend amber.  but when i saw a post somewhere about their 98-year anniversary promo offering their 8-oz baseball steaks for $.98, i figured it couldn't hurt to try and score a reservation.  you had to fill out a form on their website and pick a date within the 10-day window they were offering, and you could bring up to a total of 4 people to take advantage of the special.  so i put in a request and waited to see if i'd get confirmation.

i received an email right away that stated that my request had been received, and that it could take awhile to receive confirmation of the reservation.  so i put it on my calendar and let the hub and the kids know, and then i forgot all about it until the confirmation finally came - about a week before the reservation date. 

we arrived on friday evening right at 7:00, left the car with the valet and made our way into the restaurant.

as much as they'd made it seem like the restaurant would be jam-packed for the duration of the promo, we were a little startled to see that it was mostly empty aside for a couple of tables.  like, the place was empty.

oh well.  it didn't matter anyway.  we took our seats and checked out the menu.

just like last time, this totally caught my attention even though i knew there was probably little to no chance that we'd ever actually come back for afternoon tea here.

the promotion was valid for four of us to order the $.98 steaks.  for that price, you got just the steak and everything else was extra.  no biggie, right?  and this left the bean to order whatever she wanted, which she was pretty excited for.  what i didn't remember from my last visit here was the crazy high prices for everything.  like, the filet and grilled shrimp she was eyeing had a $75 price tag on it.  eek.  but we figured that the rest of us were getting a deal on ours, so it was all good, right?  right. 

this is the one and only picture i got of us that night:

the hub and the kids all chose the wedge salad, topped with candied bacon.

i opted for a simple caesar salad, which would have been great if it hadn't been terribly overdressed.

the baseball steaks came out, and they were...worth the price.  a little tough, rather lacking in flavor, and really just MEH.

on the other hand, the bean was perfectly happy with her $75 dinner.

in the end, after adding salads and sides and drinks, our $.98 steak dinner came out to around $200.  i should've known.  those kinds of promotions rarely turn out to be a great deal, and even worse the food was barely mediocre.  such a bummer.

oh well...chalk it up to another one of my failed outings.  at least this place is now crossed off of the list, in sharpie.  heh.