.. Restaurant Concept
Patented Intellectual Property © Wendy MasonFor years the restaurant industry has been about food and fluctuating numbers and unpredictable gratuities and strange change. It’s been a vat of inefficiency, a consistent reaffirmation of the conventions that lead to dinner for four, where the only adventure lasts for four seconds altogether: two for the menu and two for the presentation. And granted, the food may be delightful, but it preys primarily on one sense.
The wind needs to blow all the sailboats away now. Blow the sailboats far out into the placid waters within which they belong. See, the new market, the new diner is about to be thrown into breakwater.
Concept: A restaurant that is based on surprise and mystery and concepts entirely diverse and unpredictable. Cheesy from the first 12 words (78 characters) indeed but listen. This new restaurant would not have options. It would refuse the patronage of the picky. We will have meat and vegetarian but everything else is for the birds to delegate.
Here is a day in the life of the restaurant (which would have a name taken in paragraph form from the footnote of a mid-70’s civil deposition document so as to null any chance of an abbreviation or punchyness).
Breakfast: $5. People come and sit and eat what they are given. They will give into the Do As We Say concept and they will enjoy it. They will come for the adventure, just like dinner and a movie without the movie. When they get to the auntie is a biotic meeting they will have something to talk about. Breakfast was absolutely bizarre and will never be again. They brought us a sugar cane and papaya salad, coconut bread fried in cod oil and a glass of luke warm water. No tip, no tax. In fact we didn’t even get to order. We just paid a five-dollar admission fee at the door and let the ride take us from there. The perverted maitre die he told us meals were never the same. He said we had eaten like no one had ever eaten before, and that we had eaten like everyone had eaten before.
Lunch: The business crowd walks in. We have regulars. They are insane. They love the unpredictable aspect of the experience and it serves to bridge the gap between drug treatment and accounting. They come in after much word of mouth and pledge their trust to us no matter how good or how bad we serve it that day. The understanding being that if the food is awful, it is at least authentic, and therefore art. Lunch on that day is Balkan. Something bony and draped in cabbage. Something washed down with blackcurrant juice on ginger ice. It is $8 and served on scale. The cost of the operation is cheap. The lack of options creates a very forward kitchen run by a chef so talented that we had to kidnap him out of a jaded retirement. The customers leave back to the office or the gym or the bank of the empty plot of land with something more than food. It’s an entire experience that appeals to their geographic senses and their hedonistic leanings. Something more in places of something decidedly less. For years lunch had been lunch but now, like breakfast, it is something to talk about. The enthusiasm ridings “You wouldn’t believe” though the corridors couldn’t even be measured metrically.
Dinner: Is all show. Dinner is Dinner and a Movie without either. Who is that crusty Beatnik embarrassing himself on the milk crates? And why all the black? Is this Zucchini? Why is the staff all dressed in black? We serve Leonard Maltin’s corn cakes and explain the concept of duality as people taste it in true form. At dinner we offer a drink menu. It will read: Wine Beer Soda Fruity Cocktail. From there it will be a surprise. Every meal is a surprise and no two are alike. Like great photography and decent art it will expand your understanding of potential- yr horizons. If so much can happen at the dinner table, why can’t I go without a seatbelt (not advocating that, though)? 12$. No Tax, No Tip. Never. Pay the employees well and let them contribute.
The next day starts clean. There should never be a lack of new meals. There are countless periods and countless places from which to steal inspiration. Also note that this restaurant will, over the month through loud word of mouth, create giant hysteria and will not be able to seat demand. By no means will we be willing to compromise the uniqueness of the experience by opening another restaurant or expanding. That we are at once exclusive and accessible allows for a rare synergy in the market. It will be an anomaly.
The end of the peel...
... turn around ref, turn around
