A Night at Dick's

“We act like dicks. That’s pretty much the point.”

Derrick, my server at Dick’s Last Resort, describes his Faneuil Hall establishment pretty well. Started, Derrick thinks, in Dallas, Dick’s Last Resort (hereafter referred to as DLR) is a chain restaurant where the waitstaff is instructed to be vulgar and unpleasant. Though I’m somewhat ambivalent about the concept, requests from my editor and a promise of reimbursement from The Crimson send me on a lone journey to Quincy Market to get the DLR experience.

Having called ahead and confirmed with a slightly confused employee that there would indeed be room for one, I’m quickly shown to my seat at a long cafeteria-style table where an empty napkin dispenser, a butcher paper placemat, and a comically massive green plastic margarita glass bearing condiments mark my place setting.

DLR is between one-half and two-thirds full this Friday at 7:30 p.m. A soundtrack of anonymous (to me, at least) ’80s music blares from the ceiling. Four video monitors above the bar are evenly split between ESPN and an odd series of promotional shorts featuring Dick, the chain’s animated “ornery, politically incorrect curmudgeon” who serves as the mascot. The promotional shorts are a vulgar iteration of the sort you see on the unused scorekeeping monitors at a bowling alley. A drawing of Dick modeling underwear bears the caption “Kalvin Kline: Classy Dick.” A subsequent slide features Dick’s dog warning me that I will enjoy myself “whether [I] want to or not.”

“Put down your phone,” yells a t-shirted waitress, grabbing a phone from a little girl at the table next to me and snapping a quick selfie with it.

Beanie-clad and diamond-earringed, Derrick approaches, gives me his spiel, and lets me know that the dinner menu is on a big sandwich board by the bar.

I was a little anxious at the thought of going to a restaurant like this alone. I shouldn’t have worried. Reassuringly, the vast majority of DLR patrons don’t seem to be having much fun. Besides a group of slightly inebriated folks, who I can only assume (based on variability in age and appearance) are coworkers of some sort, hamming it up with Derrick, my neighbors (mostly families with young children) are quiet, almost taciturn.

The Maybe Coworkers table, though, absolutely loves Derrick. Almost all of its occupants are sporting tall paper hats with personalized insults scrawled across them (a DLR signature), and those that aren’t are gamely taking a tongue-lashing from Derrick, who makes kissy faces at one of the hatless men.

“Viva Viagra,” reads the hat of one of the older diners at the Maybe Coworkers table. Derrick’s other captions range from the innocuous (“I stalk boys on Instagram”) to the unapologetically dirty (“Derrick’s boner garage.”)

Derrick and a red-haired man with a huge belly filling out an extra-large DLR shirt are the star waiters. The red-haired man shouts at his tables from clear across the room while Derrick not once but twice engages in a sort of “Magic Mike” stripper pantomime for the Maybe Coworkers table.

Derrick is actually unnervingly polite to me. He takes my order for “Firecracker Salmon with Rice and Veggies” and brings over a truly gargantuan plastic glass of ice water, but besides that he mostly leaves me alone. Eventually, feeling cheated of the full DLR experience, I ask Derrick to make me a mean hat. When he does, the caption is the unbelievably docile “Macklemore’s Doppelganger.” I don’t look anything like Macklemore.

My food, when it comes, is exactly okay. The salmon is dead average (though I’m not exactly sure what made it “Firecracker Salmon” as opposed to merely “Salmon”) and the veggies (read: corn) and rice are respectively below and above average by equally small magnitudes.

“Basic white girls,” chants Derrick with accompanying claps as a group of women takes the table beside mine.

The Maybe Coworkers finish up their dinner and insist on multiple rounds of pictures with the man who has been insulting them all evening.

Ultimately, DLR’s strength is that it turns a typical insecurity of restaurant patrons on its head. At other restaurants, you’re paranoid that a nice waiter is mean about you behind your back. At DLR, you suspect that a mean waiter is, deep down, one of your pals.

“Just play along,” Viva Viagara advises the Basic White Girls on his way out. “Give as good as you get.”