Andy Rooney_ 60 Years of Wisdom and Wit - Andy Rooney [33]
One of the good things about these places is they never serve you a piece of anything you can’t eat . . . no bones, no fat. I’ve never been to Japan. For all I know, they don’t eat like this over there. Someone told me there’s a Benihana of New York in Tokyo.
Part of the fun of eating out is doing something different. Japanese is different. How many times in the last few weeks have you come home from work to find your husband fixing sukiyaki for you?
The other kind of Japanese restaurant is the sushi bar. Five years ago you couldn’t have told me I’d ever eat a piece of raw fish. Now I’m addicted to sushi. Sushi is carefully boned and carefully sliced raw fish . . . tuna . . . squid . . . mackerel . . . eel . . . octopus . . . served with cold rice wrapped in seaweed. Sounds good, doesn’t it? It’s always attractively served on a board. It looks like a Japanese painting.
Scandinavian smorgasbord places are popular, too: Americans like the idea of helping themselves to all they want. It’s as if they were getting something free.
I ate in one called the Copenhagen one day—with a friend. He’s a smorgasbord expert.
Walter Cronkite: This is a Danish something.
Rooney: Lingonberries.
Cronkite: That’s right. That’s what it is. That’s the word I was
groping . . .
Rooney: You were grasping for.
Cronkite: And they’re marvelous.
Rooney: What is this pink stuff?
Cronkite: That pink stuff is some very interesting . . . pink stuff there.
I think it’s beets. I believe. I don’t know. I’m not sure what that is. I’ve never taken it. It looks repulsive, to tell you the truth. How about shrimp? Beautiful shrimp?
Rooney: Yeah, I’ll have a shrimp. I notice they leave the shells on them, though. I figure that’s to make it hard so you don’t take too many.
Cronkite: Any restaurant you go to where the dessert tray is brought in like this, every table the reaction is the same. People recoil. They’re obviously making the statement to their friends. “I . . . I shouldn’t. Oh, no, I shouldn’t. Take that away. I don’t want to even look at that.”
Rooney: “But maybe I’ll just have a little bit.”
Cronkite: But then they come back.
Waitress: And these are special ones over here. They’re made of almond paste.
Rooney: I really shouldn’t.
Cronkite: No, I shouldn’t either . . . so have one.
Rooney: Oh, thank you.
Like everything else, there are trends in the restaurant business— fashions in what a restaurant looks like. Years ago, many good restaurants had those white tile floors with lots of mirrors around and waiters who worked there for a hundred years wearing white aprons that came to their ankles.
In the past twenty years restaurants have gotten very conscious. Too conscious, probably. In the sixties, most new restaurants with any pretensions at all looked like this. As you came in, there was usually a coat of arms in the lobby. The dominant color was red, the lights were low and there was often a candle on the table held in one of those small bowls covered with white netting.
The menu was predictable . . . steak, shrimp, chicken, filet of sole and South African lobster tail . . . meaning they didn’t really have a chef.
They were pleasant enough and there are still a lot of them around— but there’s a new trend. In the trade it’s called “the theme restaurant.” Eating in one, according to the ads, is an adventure.
If you want to start a theme restaurant, you can go to J.B.I. Industries in Compton, California. They can make the inside of your place look like anything from a submarine to a men’s locker room.
Carolyn Steinbach is production manager.
Rooney: How many of these do you do a year? How many restaurants do you design, roughly? Would you guess?
Steinbach: Well, we did something like three hundred and fifty last year.
Rooney: Could you show some of them to us?
Steinbach: Certainly.
Rooney: A pirate ship.
Steinbach: A pirate ship.
Rooney: Hey, what would it cost somebody