SCOTT LUDWIG: I (don’t) have reservations about this fancy Savannah restaurant

Cindy and I took our grandson to Savannah during his spring break. Krischan had fallen in love with the city when we took him there for the first time several years ago. A couple of tours – one for ghosts and the other for food tasting, a walk along River Street, and just the right amount of exposure to American history — led him to decide that he might like to settle down in Savannah one day.

For Cindy, the highlight of this trip was to going to be our brunch at The Grey, a restored Greyhound bus terminal that had been transformed into a posh restaurant. She was intrigued with the idea of eating there for a number of reasons:

· She and our grandson are both self-proclaimed “foodies.” (As for me, I’m perfectly content with Taco Bell.)

· Her father (and Krischan’s great-grandfather) drove a Greyhound bus for many years, so she felt a “connection” to the restaurant. She’d been there many times when she was a little girl and wanted to see how it had changed since then.

· She recently read a book – complete with some fascinating recipes (her words, not mine) – about the history of The Grey, and has dreamed of dining there ever since.

So she made reservations for brunch for the three of us. Sunday at 12:15 p.m.

Let me go back a couple of years. Cindy and I were in Austin, Texas, for a few days. We had dinner at the Grey Diner Bar, a restaurant in the city opened by the chef of The Grey. Sort of a junior varsity version of the original.

I’ll spare you the details of the experience, other than to say it’s the type of place that serves their entrees on a plate the size of a Frisbee when the food would have trouble filling up a shot glass. Somehow I left the restaurant hungrier than when I got there, so on the way back to the hotel I made a pit stop for a chalupa. You can probably guess where.

Back to Savannah on Sunday morning. After Cindy read Krischan and me the Riot Act about wearing “appropriate dress” for the occasion, we walked a good mile or so to The Grey, armed with appetites the size of, well, Texas, since we hadn’t eaten since the night before. Cindy gave the hostess our last name and said we had a reservation for 12:15.

The hostess politely said she didn’t have any reservation whatsoever for that name.

“How about a reservation for Cindy?” Nope. Try again.

“Scott?” Her third strike.

(Throwing up a Hail Mary) “How about a reservation for Krischan?” At this point, the hostess was clearly losing her patience.

Here’s the part where I should be saying the hostess showed Cindy a hint of empathy, but that would be a lie. Apparently compassion wasn’t included in her job description.

Cindy looked through her phone for confirmation of the reservation she thought she had made. But she couldn’t find one, neither in her texts nor her emails. I’ve known Cindy long enough to know she doesn’t make this kind of mistake – especially when it’s something this important to her.

My guess is that one of two things happened. (1) She forgot to check the box indicating she accepted the terms and conditions, or (2) she didn’t notate the difference between a tree and a lamp post to prove she wasn’t a robot.

But something along the way – somewhere, somehow – caused the reservation to fall through. Cindy couldn’t possibly have been any less disappointed.

I couldn’t tell which was worse: that she didn’t get to sample one of the delicious recipes she’d read about in the book or that she didn’t get to see what changes had been made since the last time she had stepped inside the former bus terminal more than 50 years ago.

As for me, I felt bad — embarrassed, maybe — for insisting she take along her book about The Grey to get autographs from one, or if she was lucky, both of the restaurant owners who co-authored the book.

Heck, we would have been lucky if we’d gotten the hostess to sign it. (And no, we didn’t ask.)

So instead of having brunch at The Grey, we settled for a late lunch at a restaurant on River Street (an establishment where Krischan remembered eating “the best pizza ever” there five years before but that I remembered as a tourist trap. (Sorry, no names. Spanky’s made me promise.)

On the plus side, by not having to foot the bill for brunch for three at The Grey, we saved enough money to pay for our grandson’s first year of college, if not part of the second. (Cindy said this wasn’t true because brunch wasn’t as expensive as dinner. So forget the last six words of the first sentence in this paragraph. The first part of the sentence, however, stands as it is.)

Besides, I’ve eaten at a Greyhound station before. Back when I was a freshman in college, I often rode in a Greyhound to see Cindy on weekends. I spent many Friday nights sitting on a counter bar stool eating dinner while waiting for my bus.

And believe me, the food wasn’t anything to write home about. But then again, at least I didn’t need a reservation.