San Mateo: Taxi's

Avocado Jack Burger (Chicken) - 1 star
$7.50 or so

On Tuesday I had another chicken-free sales call, this one in Worcester, Massachusetts: 3 eggs over hard with home fries and toast for lunch (eggs overcooked, otherwise serviceable) and cheese pizza and Greek salad in Logan Airport for dinner. (I got in an argument with the server, who handed me a Caesar salad, and, when I said I had asked for a Greek salad, insisted that it was a Greek salad. When I pointed at the Greek salad, he said, "You want the zucchini?," presumably referring to the cucumbers.) The meeting was very early in the sales cycle, with people who asked lots of tough questions but softened up as it went along. This was a large company that is just figuring out what is on the market and is talking to all the vendors; in fact, we ran into the next sales team on the way out, and figured out who they were by reading the sign-in sheet at the front desk.

But on Thursday night Brian W. and I slipped out of the office for dinner at Taxi's, a mock-1950s greasy spoon-kind of place no doubt familiar to most of my company. I had the Avocado Jack Burger with, you guessed it, chicken, which probably would have been really good if it had been a burger. As it was, the avocado was a little overbearing, and the chicken was mildly overcooked and tasteless, but mediocrity in California still beats most places in the country.