Should I Take My Date to Tumbleweed Restaurant?: A Year-by-Year Breakdown, 1992-Present.
1992: Mike Mosely came into school one morning bragging that he’d been on a date the other night, with a girl, and they had gone to Tumbleweed Restaurant. Tumbleweed was a popular regional chain of restaurants owned and operated by Chi Chi’s, with a very similar Tex-Mex-ish menu and design aesthetic to its parent company. In fact, Tumbleweed outlived Chi’s Chi’s, which you may recall closed permanently after a 2004 Hepatitis A outbreak was traced back to its lettuce; Tumbleweed still operates a number of locations in Kentucky, Indiana and Ohio. Anyway, Jonathan Katz and I found this incredibly hilarious, and we belittled Mike’s choice of venue mercilessly. Tumbleweed was where your parents took you for medium-fancy birthday celebrations. We were sure it was a completely tasteless destination for a date. We laughed and laughed, tears streaming down our face, howling the popular Tumbleweed television commercial tagline over and over, which was: “TUUUUUMBBBBBLLLLEWEEEEEEEEED.”
1995: No dates for the 1995 calendar year, so this would be strictly hypothetical. But you know, as far as suburban chains go, you could do worse. They’re dimly lit. There’s table service. That makes it nice, right? Sort of? Plus, it’s not very expensive. Sure. That would be OK.
1997: Look. Andrew Sturdevant is not into fancy girls. Tumbleweed is a perfectly OK place to get nice Mexican food. If my date wants to go to some, I don’t know, expensive restaurant, it’s just not going to work out between us, because Andrew Sturdevant cares about things other than money and fancy food.
1998: Oh, I don’t know. Tumbleweed? That’s kind of, I don’t know, suburban-y, isn’t it? I think we can do better. I am not sure where. Maybe that…well, maybe we’ll just drive around and find something in, er, the Highlands? I don’t know the Highlands very well. I get lost. Maybe, uh, let’s just get something from the cafeteria and eat it in the quad.
2001: Oh my god. I have a crazy idea. Let’s go to Tumbleweed. I know, right? That would be so awesomely trashy! And then maybe afterwards, we should go see, like, Rock Star with Marky Mark at the Village 8. Oh my god. That is hilarious. Yes. Totally. We should dress up, too. Like, I’ll wear khakis. With pleats on the front! Ha ha ha ha ha! Oh my god! We have to do this! We have to do this!
2002: That’s ridiculous. Plus, it’s not open late enough. Look, I know this place in North Oakland off of Forbes that’s open until 3 a.m. And it’s real Mexican food. Let’s go there.
2004: Naw, we can do better. (Editor’s note: Can we? I would like to say that, by this time, any possibility of going on a date to Tumbleweed would have passed. But thinking about it: I did not spend over $25 on a meal until I was 27 years old. At least 27. I did not know the difference between butter and margarine for much longer than is reasonable. As much as I’d like to rule it out by 2004, we simply can’t rule it out.)
2006: I don’t think so. I mean…yeah, it’s where I would have gone in 1995, but…well, yeah, for family events. Stuff like that. You want to see what that was like? Well, OK, I guess. If you really want to see what the suburbs were like. I mean, you grew up in the suburbs, too, right? It’s not like…
2008: Come on. No. I’ll take you somewhere nice.
2011: I guess if that’s where your parents want to go, that’s fine.
