I'M DATING THE RESTAURANT, THE RESTAURANT IS DATING YOU
(NOBODY IS DATING ME)
Are you meeting somebody?
No, I’m dating the restaurant.
Are you dining alone?
No, I’m dating the restaurant.
(I said it just like that.)
Should I put those flowers in a vase for you?
Please do, they’re for the restaurant.
Right this way, sir.
To my booth, table, barstool. Praying it’s a barstool.
Restaurants, I’ve dated a couple. Right now I’m seeing this one in East London. We just met tonight, a mutual friend set us up. It’s going to be quick, we’ve only got the table for an hour. The waiter keeps whispering sweet nothings in my ear, things that sound like dinner specials, but I already know what I want. I order dinner for two and a bottle of an Alsatian muscat blend I’ve been dying to try. It doesn’t even matter. I’m here for the restaurant, didn’t I tell you that already?
This is the beginning of a short story I never finished. It was supposed to be a joke. It was supposed to have a punchline. I just couldn’t crack it. It felt too cloying, too desperate, too real. Afterall, it was inspired by a real dinner I had at Mangal II in East London sometime during the 2019 holiday season. I was eating there alone because I couldn’t get anyone to come with me. My sister, who I was visiting in London, had a life, a job, and a kid to take care of. I think it was a Tuesday. And me? I was on vacation. I just had restaurants to date. I didn’t mind going alone, it meant I could order exactly what I wanted. Usually that means offal. It also meant I could just look around and observe the place. To me, that was half the point.
At the time I was deep into a waiter's life in Sweden. I lived above the restaurant I worked in, and being part of the globalized restaurant community was all I cared about. My only friends were coworkers and I liked it that way. There had been a heartbreak, and the job picked me up off the floor. The community glued my feet to the ground. I was part of the continuum and maintaining that membership meant eating out. A lot. New restaurants, old restaurants, I was constantly looking for the next hot date. Mangal II was just next on a list of Tinder matches that I was using to wring some meaning out of my life.
My thing is, I love restaurants like other people love romantic partners. It’s not normal. It’s not even very discriminating. I love good ones, bad ones, Chinese ones, or in this case, East London ocakbasi ones. My dinner at Mangal II was fantastic but this isn’t a restaurant review. Do you review the people you date online? Maybe you do but that’s nasty work. I don’t go to a restaurant for a good time, I go to a restaurant to go to a restaurant.
I know what that sounds like. Yes, I was intensely lonely, but I didn’t feel intensely lonely. I always had a restaurant to go to.
It’s the sweetbreads, the mushroom burek, and the cull yaw kofte for me. The grilled octopus too. But the food, the food is not the point. The wine? The wine could be the point. On another night, it would be. I could really tell you about this wine. It’s a blend of muscat, gewurztraminer, pinot gris, and riesling, the four noble grapes of Alsace. It’s also transcendent. But who cares? I already told you what this is about.
The waiter is coming over. I think he wants to kiss me? No he doesn’t. He wants to know if want dessert. I don’t eat dessert, I would love something to help me digest all this delicious food though. Maybe a big glass of raki? Bring the water to the table please, I like to see it louche.
They’re gonna have to carry me out of this one. They’ll be sad to see me go. They wanted me to be there as much as I did. Sometimes a little reciprocation is all it takes. Sometimes that’s all you need. That and a little friction.
The story gets even more delusional after that. There are lines about humping the woodwork of handcrafted tables, inappropriately handling French cutlery, etc. I didn’t know how it would get there but I knew I wanted to end it on a note of sad, empty, cynicism. I had the last line in my head for weeks.
Everybody knows you’re nothing but the last restaurant you ate at.
This is what hopeless devotion looks like. I’m much more Sandy in Grease than Gordon Ramsey in Hell’s Kitchen when it comes to food. There was supposed to be an American Psycho-esque element of satire to the story, but it ended up just kind of pathetic. I was clearly sick with obsession. Before I left I gave half my bottle of wine to the table next to me. They were waiters too. I couldn’t finish the bottle on my own, not with the rest of the drinking I had to do that night anyway. It was still early when I stumbled out of Mangal II, and I planned on eating somewhere else, post-digestion. Maybe some late night Chinese? A classic bang-bang? London has too many restaurants, how would I ever try them all if I didn't eat five meals a day?
There are wrong ways to travel.
Even after the high of Mangal II, a meal that had me levitating in my seat, I was still looking for another hit. I spent the rest of the night walking around Hackney, a coworker of mine used to live there and told me where to go. I stopped at her old local, The Shacklewell Arms, and tried to imagine her life there. I took a piss in the obscenely small bathroom she used to rail lines in, thought about recreating the scene, but in the end I left, walked to Beigel Bake, and had some salt beef.
Back then I would do anything to get out of myself. To become something new. Isn’t that what dating is all about? And eating too? We’re all just out there looking for that one meal, or person, to make our empty stomach, or life, whole again.
A lot of times, particularly with offal, people transpose qualities onto their food, assign them properties in the hopes of absorbing them. Eat a beef heart and become fearless, try bull testicles to boost your libido, go to a Michelin starred restaurant and develop taste. As it turns out, you can’t absorb testosterone through your stomach lining, all heart does is strengthen your immune system, and there's not a single restaurant out there that can make you a better person.
I’m wondering how long can this thing really last? Should I come back tomorrow? There’s more food and there’s definitely more bottles. I know, it’s only the first date, but do you mind if I put us on Instagram? It doesn’t have to mean anything, unless, unless you want it to? But no, it’s a one night thing. We had a good time, why ruin it with more attention to detail. Pretty soon I’ll be coming every week and pretty soon after that we’ll be in couple’s therapy.
I just want a little passion, a little spark. I’m easy that way. And I’m not crazy, you know. There are other people in my life. I know the man I’d rather be here with. I know the woman. I was just texting them both before I got here. But never during.
During, I'm putting the words together. I’m exposing myself, I’m learning things. The first date is awkward if you don’t show enthusiasm. If you can’t even fake a conversation, or interest, or desire what’s the point? If the restaurant’s not making eyes at me, then I’m eyeing the kebab place around the corner. I read about that place online, I heard they put out.
When I love a restaurant, it’s unconditional. It has to be. I will sit through a bad meal thinking, oh, they’re just having a tough time. I will drink broken glass if my cup is chipped. I will tip anyway. It’s what I want in return. Acceptance, reciprocation. I know it’s not exclusive, but to me it is private. I don’t need another customer’s love to validate my own. I don’t want to know who else sits in my barstool when I’m not there. They can have the weekend if I get the week. It’s not a competition.
And yes, I know a restaurant is offering a service. That service is not love, but it is care. Sometimes that care can be suffocating. Sometimes it’s just the right amount. Sometimes there’s a spark that flames out halfway through a meal.
Have you ever gone on a date and known it’s not going to work in the first five minutes? Because I haven’t. I never know it’s over until long after it’s done. I will come back, time and time again, thinking that maybe this time, maybe this meal will be “the one”.
Maybe I’ll just have a good time.
Happy New Year!
Can I still say that?
Anyway, it’s the beginning of our editorial calendar, and I am trying to keep things more organized and interactive.
In an attempt to make GUTS more of a magazine, I am running a contest, the “VOGUE MONEY” contest, in which I am paying $4.50 a word (Carrie Bradshaw’s rate at Vogue) for a story. The caveat is, the money comes from my monthly paid subscriber earnings. This month that’s $50, which means there’s enough money for 11 words. The theme is “guts”. Send me your best micro-fiction, knock-knock jokes, or pithy sentences. Who knows, maybe next month there will be more to work with.
In addition to that, I am starting a letter column, so if you have any offal related questions, please send them our way.
The GUTS Warehouse is open for business.
gutsmagazzino@gmail.com
I also dated Mangal II, it was everything I could have dreamed of (and sounds like we ate the same dishes!) Had a fling with a pretty cool bridge recently, considering writing about it.
I legitimately laughed out loud at parts of reading this and the furrowed my brow in sadness at others. You're a wonderful human. Be a slut, date all the restaurants. (and share more fiction writing with us all!)