Ten Signs You're Having Lunch with Preggy-in-Pink - Beacon

1. You have to park way, way, waaay the hell over there in the next county because there isn’t enough room anywhere else in Beacon's parking lot for Preggy-in-Pink and the beachball attached to her torso to get out.
2. The hostess seats your party right away, even if you don’t have a reservation and there are more than a half-dozen parties ahead of you. Side note: If you want the best seat in the house, you could probably get it.
3. On the way to the table, Preggy-in-Pink points at everything on everyone’s tables, remarking how “that looks sooooo good.”
4. We don’t order. She does.
5. When it’s only 12:30 and the kitchen is already out of the Bento box, she looks like she’s going to stab the server with the butter knife. But then she calms down. *phew*
6. There is absolutely no rhyme nor reason to the final order: tonkatsu because that’s what she’s craving (even if Mom balks with “$9.25 for tonkatsu? Are they crazy?!?”), a green bean salad with smoked tofu and radishes for the growing baby inside, and um, French fries? That’s for her. Just because she feels like it, okay?!?!
7. “Is it just me or is it warm in here?” she asks as she removes her very snug shrug. Yes, Preggy, it is you. It’s November.
8. The server re-fills her water glass about 18 times. And yours and your mother’s, but neither you nor your mom have had a single drop of water to drink.
9. A table of three women is “not in the mood” for dessert. She shrugs. She’s just not; and that’s is perfectly fine with us. Check, please!
10. She has to “walk off” some water retention, which is pregnancy-code for “shopping” at H.D. Buttercup.

Mom, my very pregnant sister, and I went to Beacon in Culver City for lunch just a few weeks before she was due. I had been there previously a couple of times (both, also for lunch) and thought the pan-Asian food was not quite worth the menu prices. However, it has a very "nice" atmosphere - it's new, clean, and California casually upscale - so it remains on my list, though relegated to the "only go if you're dining with people whose company will keep you highly entertained and your mind off the food."