Dinner on the Town
I sat in fear tonight at the Cosi’s on Union Square.
My friend Adam and I had gotten together to find him some new Magic: the Gathering cards (they get old so fast. Damned marketing schemes!). After finding our first location, Neutral Ground, closed for the day, we headed down to Forbidden Planet on Union Square. Finding exactly what we were looking for, we left Planet and tried to figure out a place to eat. I’d just finished designing some icons that I wanted to show him and upload, so I suggested the Cosi’s across the street.
I found out a few weeks ago after stumbling upon a Cosi’s on 8th Street that I love this latest chain-restaurant. Slowly growing for the past few years, more and more locations have been popping up around the city. I frequent one at one of my internships, and trek purposefully to this one between 6th & Broadway. Playing a lot of alternative/soft rock (reminded me of how much I like Dave Matthews Band), free wireless internet and it’s inception being the creation of a new kind of flat bread (that is delicious), it was destined to become a hit with me and my carb-craving self.
So we walk over to the Cosi and it turns out to be like anything but the places I’m used to. The lights have been dimmed down to the point where everything just looks like it’s a shade of gray with a hint of color. We have to wait to be seated, and once we are, for a waiter to take our orders. And though this is the usual deal at a restaurant, this is not how Cosi’s is usually run. After our drink orders are taken, we’re served our soda in plastic cups and were given a plastic knife and fork, along with out paper napkins. The internet would not connect to my laptop, and the waiter would disappear without checking on us.
I’ve only ever been to one other restaurant that does this, Atlanta Bread Company in White Plains. They do the restaurant turn over at night, but you order your food at the register and then stick a card with a number on a stand on your table and that’s it. That’s the most interaction you have with a “waiter.” you’ve already paid and you don’t have to worry about anything else. The lighting has been dimmed, but only enough so that they can bring out candles to put on all the tables. I sit down knowing that my chair is red.
Adam and I stared at each other, and then he started preparing to take the waiter down with the plastic knife. And though this would probably have been funny in any other situation (and I did laugh a good chunk that night), upsetting a vegetarian on a diet who usually does not like waiters (or waitresses) is not a good idea. Especially when he believes that the food you served him turned out to be the most unappetizing he could have expected.
It became my job to get us out of there, though I failed miserably at it as our waiter continued to dodge in and out of a back section and look anywhere but in our direction. Adam finally flagged down a waitress and asked her for our check. And though she said “Yes, of course,” nothing arrived. About five minutes, after many assurances to my comrade that we would be leaving shortly, our checked arrived with a big “Thank You!” written on the top left of the check. I can’t help but smile at it and point it out to Adam who gives me a look of disdain.
- Spider