Choice: Cheap or Delicious?

Saturday night we went out for the cheapest evening ever.  It was not planned as a challenge or anything (though, hmm...might be a fun one), it just turned out that way.

We met up with our friends Shammah and Cathy at Rock Bottom Brewery.  Chris was stuck on repeat both before and after the outing about how much he loved their beer, and after how glad he was that he finally got to have it again.  The place was PACKED.  We knew it would be.  It's in the 25th largest mall in America (ok, really thought that would be a more impressive stat when I looked it up), and it was Saturday night.  We waited an hour just to be seated.

We weren't bothered.  As I said, we expected it.  But as soon as we sat down, the boys got beers, and I started sucking down the massive amounts of lemonade I always consume.  We also quickly ordered a platter of nachos, and observed that a huge party had just been sat in the room next to us.  Just as a recommendation to all you restaurateurs out there, they do nachos RIGHT.  They spread out the nachos on a huge cutting board thing so that when you put the toppings on, there aren't any "naked" chips. You all know it's the gunk we're really interested in, so c'mon, help us fight naked chip-dom.

Having not seen each other since I got pregnant (wow, really?  that's bad), we were just enjoying catching up.  And the massive spread of nachos kept us from being too hungry.  However, the waiter approached the table, looking quite flustered, and apologized profusely and told us that our MEALS had been comped...because the meals still weren't out to us 50 minutes after the nachos.  The kitchen had been overwhelmed by the large party.  We all argued quite a bit over whether he had actually said "meals" or "beers" just because we couldn't imagine them covering the meals, even if it had been a long time.  We just decided to proceed as before.

When it was time for the bill...there was no bill!  When he said "meals", not only did he mean the entrees, but apparently absolutely everything.  Obviously, we tipped him $20 (over 20%), but other than that?  It was free!  Admittedly, my salad tasted like it had sat in dressing for awhile, and Chris said his steak was cold, but hey, I'll take it.  But would you? 

Would you choose the free food that had sat too long, or the full-price meals that were as they should be?