The Restaurant Plotnik Loves That Does Not Exist

Why can't somebody open the restaurant we'd like to go to on a regular basis? They used to exist, red checked tablecloths, eight or ten tables, waiters who looked like they lived there, simple entrees that came with soup, salad, dessert and coffee. There was tile on the floor and fabric on the walls that absorbed noise. If you didn't want tomatoes they brought you potatoes and if you didn't want potatoes they brought you tomatoes.

Luna was like that. Twenty years after Plot and Duck had been there last they walked back in and the waiter remembered Sausage and Peppers and Linguini Shrimp and Clams.

But Luna is closed.

La Tour Eiffel was like that. But someone shot the owner while he was taking the night's cash to the bank drop-off. At least nowadays they take credit cards and let it go at that.

Plotnik loves to cook and loves to eat every bit as much as the next person. But does he REALLY care that Farmer Pachinsky grew his mizuno greens? Really? Plotnik says f**k Farmer Pachinsky and the compost he rode in on. It's just like writing. If the waiter has to explain every component of your dinner to you then the food isn't explaining itself very well, right?

And does the waiter always have to recommend the most expensive thing on the menu? "What is good tonight?" "Oh I love the Niman Ranch Filet in an organic El Bloato cabernet reduction made from  free range Sonoma mushrooms and house-made salt from the owner's wife's tears."

Plotnik wants to use the Magic Look on this guy until he tells the truth: "Actually, I haven't tasted it. They just give us yesterday's leftover fish."

Let's not get started about wine. Restaurant patrons must be like Costco shoppers. Yesterday, Plot went to Costco. Wine is the big ticket item down there now so they've moved it to the very front of the store. Plottie was walking down the wine aisle and he saw cases of Kendall Jackson Wine, marked "GREAT CASE PRICE!" People were throwing these cases into their shopping carts, but when Plotnik tried to figure out what the actual wines actually were, he realized that information was not written anywhere on the package. The only thing that mattered to the Costco shoppers was that you got a case of wine for $50, not what the wine was.

That wine is what you get when you order a glass of wine for $10 at your hipster special gastropub. But at the restaurant Plot loves that does not exist, the wine was made in the basement by the owner's father. He crushed those grapes with his house-made, organic, free-range, filthy feet. It's $5 bucks a glass and when you clink glasses they sound like cement. Mmmm.