miscellany

The Saturday before last Saturday, an Upper East Sideish lady came into my place of employment. Because she was so stereotypically obnoxious, I made sure to examine her black AmEx before smugly informing her that we only accept Visa and Mastercard. Serendipitously, today Gawker told of her upcoming novel about opening a restaurant in the Hamptons. I wonder if the "upscale food shop" in her "novel" was also sabotaged by her toddler son's apparent love of throwing products on the floor, rolling around on t-shirt displays, and screaming at the top of his lungs until he's fed some cheese. I also wonder if someone who can't tell the difference between fresh and cooked chorizo should be writing a food-related guidebook...

Speaking of food, I could not agree more with Frank Bruni's recent rant about the word "enjoy," a word that became dead to me one night as I was serving a fellow LES waiter who, when asked if I could clear his plate, responded with a smug, creepy, spine-tingling grin, "No, we're still enjoying." Though this is generally a case of the waitstaff being patronizing, there is also a flip-side. That is the customer name-asking, to which I now reply, "My name's Gina, what's your name? Oh, nice to meet you."

Somehow always speaking of food, my parents are leaving Wisconsin after 20 magical years. I'm truly saddened to be losing my childhood home, and I hope that their new residence in Chili, New York (that's pronouced like the words "chai" and "lie" put together), has the same amount of character. I'm sure it won't, being a suburb, but hey, at least there's a Wegman's.