While in Phoenix I happened to stumble across The Meal Factory. I walked in the front door and assumed I was in a restaurant supply house, but it turns out that it’s actually a place where you can come with a date and prepare your own gourmet meal. All the ingredients are prepared ahead of time, and the staff takes care of the cleanup.
You and your date stand next to each other at a little countertop, get cozy and make your meal together, and then eat it together while someone else cleans up the mess you made. Such a better date idea than dinner and a movie.
What makes it amusing is that you can also choose to have the staff prepare the entire meal for you at no extra charge. Great deal, right? Design a restaurant where people cook their own food and people are thrilled to have the option to have someone cook for them. I want to see a restaurant where you go in, sit down, order your food, and the waiter asks, “Hey, how’d you like to come back and cook it yourself?”
My IMDB page has appeared. Neat!
Well, my two weeks of anonymity in Europe were fun, but they’re over now. I made it as far as the food court in the Newark airport before someone asked to take a photo of me. And Phoenix has been ridiculous. The desk clerk at the hotel recognized me when I checked in, along with the greeters at the restaurant I went to afterwards, several hotel guests, and countless people left and right when I went out to the bars tonight.
The high point of the evening, though, may have been this conversation:
Drunk dude: “Hey! I recognize you!”
Me: “Hey man, what’s up?”
blah blah blah conversation blah blah blah
Me: “It’s a bit of a sausagefest in here!”
Drunk dude now hanging off my shoulders: “Yeah… thank God!”
It’s ok, gay guys need D-list celebrity sightings, too.
London, you’re out. Paris, you’re in. If I had to pick any city in the world to live in, it’s got to be Paris or New York.
Paris is beautiful. I remember walking around with a friend one night and all of a sudden this beautiful building rises up in front of us. “What’s that?” I asked. He had no idea, of course. In Paris, beautiful buildings are everywhere.
All the food is fresh. What a change from London’s prepackaged food everywhere! The pieces of bread I got for free at the local bar were as good as the best baguettes I’ve found in the US. Chocolate eclairs have chocolate in them! As does the granola, Special K, cornflakes, and Cocoa puffs.
The one city that could give Paris a run for its money is Rome. That’s on the schedule for next trip.
Not only is the food wonderful (especially after a week in London), the women beautiful, the clothes fashionable, and everyone well-dressed, but France has this wonderful habit of putting chocolate in everything.
Hmm, croissants are good. Let’s add some chocolate. Yogurt’s good, too. You know what would make it better? Pieces of chocolate. In the US, we have corn flakes. In France, they have cornflakes with flakes of chocolate mixed in. In the US, you might decide to be healthy and eat some granola. In France, the granola comes with chunks of chocolate. Back home, we have Cocoa Puffs. In France, they have Cocoa Puffs Avec Chocolat.
