The Case of the Befuddled BYOB

It was Friday night, so I slapped on my fedora and walked a few blocks to the local Irish restaurant, The Celtic Citchen. According to the sign out front, the restaurant was a BYOB, which I was really psyched about. Finally I found a place that encouraged me to bring my own blanket—and I didn’t go anywhere without Mr. Snuggles.

I was informed at the door that the last ‘B’ actually stood for ‘beverage,’ presumably alcoholic. So I popped next door to a wine shop and purchased a bottle of its finest $4 blend.

Back inside the restaurant, a solid woman with a hurricane of swirling red hair seated me, Mr. Snuggles and my bottle of table red.

“How are you doing?” she said in clear English.

“Great, especially since you don’t have an accent,” I answered. “The last time I went to an Irish restaurant, my waiter and I had trouble communicating. I asked for pudding for dessert and he brought me pig’s blood.”

“Ah,” she said. “You must have ordered black pudding, which is one of our many delicacies here.”

“Called ‘delicacies’ because of the delicate nature of the diner’s stomach afterwards,” I said, recalling the intestinal ingratitude I felt after tasting said pudding, “So, what do you recommend here?”

“Our specialty is crubeens, which is made with boiled pig trotters.”

“Trotters? Please tell me that’s not some Irish idiom for testicles, like Rocky Mountain Oysters.”

“What? Gross! No, trotters are pig’s feet. Not gross at all. I’ll give you a few minutes to decide.”

She left me staring at the menu, but I couldn’t make up my mind. I suddenly began to worry that every dish secretly had some peculiar pig part in it. Was there tongue in the shepherd’s pie or pickled snout in the stew?

My sudden onslaught of swineophobia made me thirsty, so I reached out to unscrew my bottle of wine…but it wasn’t there! Using my lightning-fast powers of deduction, I realized my waitress must have swiped it.

“Excuse me,” I said, approaching her at the bar. “Did you take my bottle of wine?”

“Why yes. We take your alcohol and place it behind the counter and then serve it back to you as you order it.”

“But this is a BYOB establishment, right? Do you have a liquor license?”

“No, which is why it’s BYOB. You don’t get out much, do you mister?”

“I get out plenty, and I see plenty…plenty of liquor liability exposures you’re opening yourself up to.“

Why did Ace think the restaurant was over-exposed?

Check your solution against Ace’s.