6. The Lavish Gluttony

And here, dear reader, is a very, very abridged list of some of the notables who have frequented Zemblanity 3:

Meg Ryan, Dennis Quaid, Susan Lucci, Babyface, Chelsea Clinton, Rosanne, Michelle Pfeiffer, George Clooney, Julia Roberts, Catherine Deneuve, Prince, Paul Anka, Francis Ford Coppola, Alec Baldwin, Nan Kempner, Naomi Campbell, Candice Bergen, Jim Carey, Marilyn Monroe, Warren Beatty, Don Johnson, Bette Davis, Gloria Vanderbilt, Barbra Streisand, Andy Warhol, Diana Ross, Diane Sawyer, Dudley Moore, Parker Posey, Susan Sarandon, Daryl Hannah, Bruce Willis, Ivanka Trump, Melanie Griffith, Antonio Banderas, Joan Rivers, Nicole Kidman, Brooke Astor, Glen Close, Mia Farrow, Vanessa Williams, Jack Nicholson, Tyra Banks, John Lennon, Yoko Ono, John Cusack, Kate Beckinsdale, Brooke Sheilds, John Travolta, Jodie Foster, Cher, Brittany Spears, Paul Newman, Calista Flockhart, Ron Howard, George Lucas, Sharon Stone, Lisa Kudrow, Steven Spielberg, Farrah Fawcett, Gretta Garbo, Marlina Deitrich, Liza Minnelli, Tatum O’neal, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Linda Evangelista, Kim Cattral, Mariah Carey, Anderson Cooper, Michael Douglas, Francesco Scavulto, Danny Devito, Reah Pearlman, Kim Basinger, Molly Ringwald, Jaclyn Smith, Jaqueline Kennedy Onassis, Caroline Kennedy, Taylor Swift, Oprah…

The actual list could be its own blog and would be truly overwhelming. One of the eldest waiters, Phil, has worked at Zemblanity for over twelve years (!). He is a very amusing fellow and looks like one of the Three Stooges. He has a hunched back and walks quickly through the hurlyburly of the restaurant with his arms straight down. Phil is one of the nicest fellows every and speaks with a formality that seems to reside somewhere between the true politeness of an old school waiter and the subversive mockery of the oppressed. He cocked his head toward me in a bird-like way as he often does and said "I sometimes believe that I have seen every famous person ever born."

One of those celebrities, Alec Baldwin, refers to Zemblanity on the show 30 Rock. His character is describing the $1000 Lavish Gluttony sundae as his favorite desert in New York. In the show Zemblanity is called "Plunder" and a good deal of the show is about how hard it is to get in. Plucky Miss Lemon gets in right away though because her boyfriend is that Donald Draper guy from Mad Men who is so good looking that "he looks like a cartoon pilot."

The Lavish Gluttony Sundae has gold leaf on it, is served on a golden plate with a golden spoon in a crystal dish (which is lined with gold leaf), has three scoops of expensive ice cream, chocolate from all over the world, nuts dipped in gold and so on. I have seen one served with my own eyes. It was presented to an older woman from Los Angeles as a present from her Middle Eastern boyfriend. They sat at a table with this ridiculous looking desert and the whole time she frowned and complained. It was the most surreal thing- our nation is in a recession and I am watching a rich, unhappy person frown and literally eat gold. Everyone else in the restaurant seemed to enjoy it more than this opulent miser.

Stephen Colbert has actually spoofed the desert as well. On his show, he did a bit about dining and dashing on $1000 meals. At one point, he takes some of the gold dust that is used as a topping and cuts it up with a credit card and pretends to do lines of it. Then he asks if he could pay an extra $1000 to have a poor person watch him eat it. Finally he sticks sheets of gold leaf to his face and dashes outside to puke in the doorway where I have my smoke breaks.

It is somewhat less known that Zemblanity offers a $25,000 hot chocolate which has a diamond bracelet on it and actual diamonds in it (along with the gold and all the golden accoutrements). Supposedly, a good deal of this money would go to charity if anyone ever bought it. Zemblanity seems to always be pulling wild publicity stunts like this.

Take this for example. One morning I came in, expecting to clean everything like normal but there was a large crowd of news cameras, photographers and reporters, standing around in well pressed and serious suits. The place was almost dead silent. I asked my pal Chris what everyone was up to and he replied that "they're all waiting for four gallons of milk to boil." You see, on that particular morning, Zemblanity was attempting to break the Guinness Book of World Records mark for the "largest hot chocolate" ever. There were reporters from the Daily News and CBS and NBC and of course, a number of Guinness Judges.

I couldn't believe that all these people, with more respectable and better paying jobs that myself, were just standing around solemnly for such a ludicrous reason. I couldn't help laughing. It was so magically stupid! But pretty soon they brought out the milk and poured it into a custom made, four gallon mug (with a handle!), mixed in the chocolate and poured a giant vat of whipped cream onto the top. This was filmed and photographed extensively. Then Mr. Charles was presented with a certificate which certified the world's record for biggest hot chocolate and all the reporters clapped an embarrassed sort of applause. I did get a small mug out of the world's largest hot chocolate and... it didn't taste like record breaking cocoa, it just tasted like regular hot chocolate. Is there a lesson in that? No.

After everyone was done taking pictures of this monstrous monstrosity, all the waiters stood around it, taking pictures of each other with their iPhones. Three or four of them have it as their Facebook pictures. As the time neared for the restaurant to open, two of the waiters had to hoist it up to dump out in the kitchen sink. Carrying the four gallons of chocolate in a four gallon mug, they looked just like Oompa-Loompas.

There was a rather startling and hilarious newspaper article I found recently. It was all about how, a few years back, the restaurant that serves a $25,000 hot chocolate was shut down for a couple weeks by health inspectors due to infestations of rodents and cockroaches! Huzah!