I need help from you socializing Socialists:

[Ilsa]

Hubby's parents are having an anniversary dinner next Saturday. I've reserved a room in a casual Italian restaurant (Johnny Carino's) which has really good food here. We are expecting about 20-24 people. The restaurant has 30-inch square tables. How do you think I should have the tables arranged?

Should we line them up? Form a U with the tables? Semi-circle? Round? What do you think works best? Let's assume all of the family members get along pretty well.

What do you think is best for the interaction and dynamics?

[MrCoffee]

1. Stack them one on top of the other

Nothing says interaction and dynamics like dining with three people on your shoulders.

[hippywife]

2. Johnny Carino's?

Second only to Olive Garden for the worst Italian food ever. I hope his family isn't Italian.

With regard to table arrangement, if you want to see everyone not enjoying their meal and being able to complain about it with the entire group, I would suggest the U formation.

Sorry, don't mean to be so negative but the food there is really, really bad. I am Italian and I've eaten there twice just to give them the benefit of the doubt and another chance. Bad both times.

There has to be someplace better.

Hope you have a good time whatever you do. :hi:

[Ilsa]

3. We have very few restaurants here. One of the other ones IS Olive Garden.

Where I live, JC has much, much better food than OG. The atmosphere is also better.

Another restaurant is Texas Roadhouse, which is very loud and everything is fried. We'll need ambulances for multiple cardiac arrests. And we were looking for something better than mason jars to drink from.

A really good restaurant is a sushi house. But for this family, I'd need semi-automatic weapons to keep that plan intact.

My husband and his brother are bearing the cost of this event. They aren't looking to spend $50 a person at a great restaurant. Our town has a population of about 70,000. Fast food and mom-and-pop mexican food joints are standard fare here.

[hippywife]

5. I hear you on

the Texas Roadhouse, but only because we aren't sitting there at a table trying to talk. My parents took my other half and I there once and it was terrible!

Sounds like the best you're going to do, I guess. Just don't order the chicken marsala. The marsala sauce tasted suspiciously like it was made with Lipton Onion Soup. Blech!

[Ilsa]

7. That's good advice. I'm narrowing the party menu down to 6 entrees.

Otherwise, the kitchen will spend all night trying to fill orders.

A couple of decent items I've had: the lasagna is okay, the eggplant parmigiana is pretty good, and I really like the salmon salad with the house dressing and capers.

[LeftyFingerPop]

4. Whatever way makes them easy to tip over for protection when the gunfire starts.

[Bossy Monkey]

6. I'm kind of seeing two parallel lines of 6 tables each

given that size of table, but you'd probably due best asking the server or restaurant manager.