Job Brainstorm: Whine & Diner
It can only have been the last time I ordered Chinese food that I had the following brainstorm.
I was having a no-good, very bad day when I knew the only temporary solution would be a comforting dinner that evening. Beer wouldn’t do, because I was doing well not to keep beer in the house and because I had no plans to go out that night and didn’t want any. I wanted to crawl right into bed, but first, however improbably given my size, into a plateful of chicken and broccoli with an egg roll and the aggressive brown sauce that truly separates Chinese food from ordinary, healthy food.
Ever mindful of the pain of others, and of how much free time I’d soon have, I immediately thought how this idea could be brought to the public. It would have to be more than just comfort food to give this idea its wings, because there are plenty of restaurants that offer satisfactory options along those lines.
No, complaining would be in on this idea’s ground floor. The confession would have to precede the absolution. The day’s problems would have to (again) be given voice just before the food being served, the cure-all thus having maximum effect.
In this restaurant – the Whine & Diner – the customer enters sideways through the door, of course, so the world on his shoulders can fit through. He has a seat – on a regular bar stool, or on a couch if that’s not putting too fine a point on it. Finally, he orders. While the food is being prepared/reheated/cooked, which shouldn’t be long given its presumed rusticity, the customer has the perfect opportunity to run through what’s on his mind. The server has the obligation to listen.
Details are still to be shaken out – the qualifications of the servers, their particular training for this forum, how to cook the preferred meals without hiring the mothers of all these customers ahead of time – but the gist is already a good step forward.
It was right after I brainstormed this that I thought they already have places somewhat like these, and they’re called “bars,” or elsewhere, “pubs.” To address this similarity in function, the W&D’s tagline should be something like, “Why feel no pain when you can feel fat and happy?”
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