The food at Zemblanity is not particularly good. It’s not particularly bad either, it’s just food. The deserts are flashy but were one to read reviews of the place, one would not expect there to be over an hour wait immediately upon opening at 11:30 in the morning. However, almost every day, there it is: a Disneyland-ish cue stretching down the block toward the East River.
It is the humble opinion of this host that New Yorkers (or people visiting New York) are drawn and titillated by lines and crowds. Often, when I inform a hopeful patron that the wait is three hours, they will respond, “Well then, it must be exceptionally good!” I bite my tongue and do not argue that this logic may not be sound. Many of these people just want to be “in on” something and it doesn’t much matter what they are in on. I have only been in the employ of Zemblanity for three months but the worst wait I have seen upon opening has been two hours.
Reservations are called in first, although most of the reservations for weekends in November and December have been filled since June. Then the manager walks the line, taking names and breaking the bad news about the obscene wait. Small parties are then sent in manageable numbers and I lead them to their tables.
Upon opening, seating must be staggered artfully. If every table was filled immediately, a vast deluge of simultaneous orders would overwhelm the kitchen and people would wait for their food as long as they had waited in line. This necessary pacing upsets many patrons, hungry beasts that they are, because all though they have been told to wait for two hours, they can clearly see (with their own eyes!) at least six empty tables inside. Chill out dude, you don’t have to wait two hours if you don’t want to.
But now is the time that I, as a host begin to practice my illustrious art. Here, briefly, is a taste of my genius in three scenarios.
Scenario One: I am taking in the first table of two. I decide to go upstairs to table 44. “Well my God who art in heaven, how on earth did you get to be the first ones in? Under which lucky star were you born? What good deeds did you perform in a previous life? Well, right this way, we’re going upstairs. And, it being so lovely a day and you being so lucky a soul, let’s put you right in this glorious window seat. (Actually, I take them to this table because from here they can see the ghastly line waiting desperately to enjoy what these customers are now enjoying. The German word for finding pleasure in the misfortune of others is Schadenfreude.). Here are the menus. Bon Appetite and God bless (yes this is how I actually talk at work).”
Scenario Two: I am seating a party of nine at table 21. A party of this size usually takes a frustratingly long time to seat, arranging and rearranging themselves according to their own idiosyncratic social matrix. This gives me a long time to soliloquy. “This table we are seating you at is called Pink because of the little pink flowers in this original Tiffany lamp above you. This table is famous because the artist Andy Warhol used to sit here every day. As you can see we have a small Andy effigy hanging from the ceiling here. Once a year, after the restaurant has closed, the employees gather at this very table and hold a séance to conjure Andy Warhol’s ghost from beyond the grave. I tell you this in case the spirit of pop art possesses anyone. This has also been the favored table of Oprah, Barbra Streisand and countless other notables. Everyone is successfully installed? Yes? Then enjoy yourself, indulge yourself and may your meal be remembered forever.” (The actuality of the historical claims made in this and the following scenario will be addressed in a future entry when we begin to explore Zemblanity: Fact vs. Fiction).
Scenario Three: I am seating a table of three at table 64. They have been waiting for an hour and a half and this table sucks. It’s uncomfortably small and is right next to the ruckus and confusion of the busser station. “Let me tell you something that I learned just the other day. This is the table that was most often frequented by Jackie O. She would bring John Jr. and Carolyn Kennedy here when they were little kids. Jackie came here when JFK was Senator but never while he was president. Still, they had plainclothesmen securing the building. Well, Carolyn still joins us from time to time and she always requests this table. I never knew why but I just recently learned that it’s because this is the table that she sat at with her mother when she was just a little girl.” (Note: almost all of this story is pure bullshit).
Most of my managers agree that the restaurant should be full to capacity by 12:30. Hopefully this hour has given the cooks and the wait staff enough time to develop a pace that can be sustained, more or less, throughout the day.
Now my job is to man the host’s stand (or podium, or lectern or pulpit) and take names and seat parties as appropriate tables become available. The two aspects of this are (a) not seating three tables simultaneously in one section, thus giving that waiter a conniption fit and (b) estimating the wait as people add their names to our ludicrously lengthy list. Estimating the wait 15 to 30 minutes out is easy. It becomes an infinitely more complex proposition to guess two or three hours into the future. It would be like asking a meteorologist to predict the weather on this day next year. Because we are attempting to predict the behavior of large numbers of humans, we are in the realm of political complexity or the stock market or traffic patterns. However, I doubt most weathermen are confronted so directly with the undisguised ire of those he has accidently misled. Both an overestimate and an underestimate can lead to unpleasantness.
New York can be a fucking blistering frenzy of intense people. On my way to work today, a man was cut off by a taxicab as he was crossing the street. He stopped in the intersection and began hollering at the very top of his lungs, “FUCKER! ASSHOLE! BITCH MOTHERFUCKER!” Another dude who passed me looked at this wild display of outrage and bemusedly said, “Express yo’self!” That intensity of anger and resentment is what makes my day troublesome, emotional and epic. I feel like the little Dutch boy holding his finger in the hole in the dyke to keep the country from flooding.
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