Jean-Claude was momentarily conflicted. He was on a ten-day screen fast, but the only menus in the restaurant were the ones that you have to read as a QR-code with your cell phone in order to order and to pay.
“Mon ami,” he told a waiter he had flagged over after seeing him deliver a plate of food to another table. “I am trying to simplify my life. For this reason, I have given up my phone for ten days. For this reason, I have come to eat from your organic, farm-a-table menu. Is there being any way for us to accomplish ordering the food without utilizing the telephone?”
“Oh, yeah! Oh, yeah! I dig it, totally, yes,” the waiter nodded enthusiastically. “Requiring a phone assumes privilege and here at Cultivated we’re all about access.”
“So, you have une carte de papier, a paper menu?”
“Oh, no. That’s totally brutal for the trees, bro. Just tell me what you want and I’ll hook you up, then you can pay old school with a credit card. Paperless process and peerless food. That’s what we’re all about at Cultivated.”
“Tres bien! Bring me a Croque Monsieur.”
“I dig you, but it has to be something off of our menu.”
“Sacre bleu! What IS on your menu?”
“Oh, yeah. So, the thing about this place is that we’ve got two menus – loaded and unloaded – you understand me?”
“What is la difference?” Jean-Claude asked.
“Right. The food is exactly the same on the two menus, but one has a special ingredient in it, you dig me? We offer two menus so that people who are here on their lunch break from work or whatever don’t have to go back under the influence. Did you drive? We have to take your keys if you order a Bongburger and eat it. You get them back once you’re able to identify a Grateful Dead Live cassette we keep under the bar as unlistenable.”
“So, the food on the second menu, she gets you stoned?”
“No, not all of it. Some of it’s a lot more intense. Like the cream of magic mushroom soup, the peyote poppers and the stuffed datura flowers.”
“Did you say ‘peyote poppers?’”
“Yeah, but of course we don’t use actual peyote in it. That would be disrespectful to Mescalero and Navajo culture, so we use San Pedro cactus instead. Organic. The way we cook it, you’d never know the difference.”
“I would have to remain here for the entire time of the effects? Many hours, yes?”
“Unless you get it to go, but between you and me, it doesn’t travel all that well. Once you’re done eating at the table, we have a room with chaises longues with built-in speakers and an almost universal selection of music. What can I get you tonight?”
“What do you recommend?”
“Me? I like the Cantonese bath-salted fish, but it’s really strong and, quite frankly, an acquired taste.”
“An order of ‘friends fried,’ s’il-vous-plait.”
“Coming right up.”
Literature in Small Doses 