brunch

My plate is sliding away from me across the table. The pressure needed to coax shredded cabbage onto my fork is simply too great for the frictionless surface of this glossy white tabletop. The cabbage isn’t cooperating. No, that’s unfair. What’s not cooperating is the fork: it’s too small for the job. It’s a beautiful object, this fork. But as a tool for moving food from plate to mouth, it’s clearly inferior to the task. I give up my frustrated attempts at eating and glance around the room. The space is beautiful: black leather chairs, white tabletops above bright gold uprights, white cuboid room, very high ceilings, black trim, large tall windows, and dark gauzy curtains.

Ron asks the young waitress if it used to be a bank; the architectural details give it away. He wonders if the robots are where the vault used to be.¹ She doesn’t know, looks anxious and puzzled by these questions. Apparently she’s never been asked before.

Everything in the space is beautiful. Instagram worthy. The point.

The crepe tacos look marvelous, are perfectly plated, and have all the right ingredients. They’re not actually a hand food anymore; I watch the catastrophe unfold in real time. These are fork-and-knife tacos. Ron’s burger and fries come in boxes, fresh from the burger bot, but there is no plate with the kit. My plate is still sliding all over the place. Both Linden and Jeff’s bánh mìs, like the tacos, have been elevated. This poses severe difficulties with some foods, and bánh mìs are one. They are already engineered to perfection: the bread is just right, the type of filling and amount are precisely calibrated, and they’re wrapped to go. Giant wooden restaurant sandwich spikes will not compensate for these mechanical challenges, no matter how good the constituent parts taste. And everything tastes great when we can get it into our mouths.

And another thing: the almost bare cubic space has a be-shaded DJ working his laptop station from the corner. There is, as usual, the ordinary restaurant din, which is already a challenge if sound isn’t carefully managed. The DJ is just pumping this reverberant space with so much more noise. There’s nothing in here to absorb it but us. The music is fine, maybe even good. I can’t tell. The problem is just too much of it. We are really struggling to hear each other, hear the staff. Sometimes hearing our own thoughts is difficult.

Like I said, the food tastes great, everything is fresh, prepared and served with care. And it’s all so beautiful to behold. Just wish I could eat here.

jg