Nov. 30: The village diner
I think that a village can only really have one restaurant. That
doesn't mean that there can't be more than one place to grab a meal;
what it does mean is that when the natives talk about "the restaurant,"
everyone knows what they're talking about.
In Williamstown, the restaurant is the Olde Bridge Cafe. It is a place where the old-timers congregate for "coffee college," where high school students and stay-at-home moms might go for an afternoon snack. It is not open for supper, though the nearby Jack's Pub is. Jack's Pub is a fine establishment and they make amazing chicken burgers, but it is not the village restaurant. And who could fault me for saying so?
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But I don't live in a village. I live in a town and that means there are a number of places I can go for a meal. There's Christine's - right across the street from me - that offers the standard fare of burgers and fries and hot chicken sandwiches. There's the Quirky Carrot right next door to my office, which only serves healthy fare and how I wish I could train my palate to accept it. There's the Atlantic, where 90 per cent of what you order will be deep fried, and there is The Georgian House, which is true small town fine dining. And let us not forget the numerous pizza parlours and fast food franchises like Subway, KFC, Tim Hortons and Dairy Queen that round out my town's list of eateries.
And who could forget the Highland Piper, family dining at its finest, housed in a stone mill that's about 200 years old?
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Restaurants are luxuries. By this I mean that they serve a purpose but they are not necessary for our survival. The farmer is necessary. The grocer is necessary. The restaurant is not. I am not powerless to purchase my own food and prepare it myself. Still, I inappropriate myself of this power and I choose to go to the restaurant because (a) I am lazy or (b) I crave social interaction or (c) something on the menu appeals to me.
Indeed, many restaurants are more conducive to our drive to seek others out than it is our drive to eat. Restaurants are usually abuzz with the rhythmic white noise of human conversation. Sit in the middle and it's a droning bowl of mush. Hone in on one table and you'll pick little snippets up. I went to an Ethiopian restaurant the other day (in a big city nonetheless) and I amused myself by eavesdropping on the conversation next to me. It was a young couple, probably on a first date. The woman said she had a degree in library science and was thinking about getting her Masters. The man said that the older he got, the less he feared confrontation. He said that he spent a year in the Middle East but I couldn't make out what he was doing there. His parents divorced when he was eight and his father rode a motorcycle.
I loved those two young people and I wish them happiness today.
-
If you telephone the village restaurant, the person answering the phone will likely just say "hello." They don't need to say "Village Restaurant" because they know everyone who calls is already intimately familiar with said restaurant.
This is hominess.
-
The other day, I was talking to a farmer who said that drinking and driving laws killed the small town bar. He said there was a time when it wasn't that big a deal to get all beered up and then drive home and that the police even had a nod-and-wink approach to it.
This is completely alien to my generation. We were always taught that drinking and driving is anaethema. To this day, I won't drive if I've even had a sip of alcohol and I once ended a friendship with someone who tricked me into getting into a car with a drunk driver.
-
I wandered into a village diner a few years ago. The diner was, and still is, run by my friend. He told me he had to lay off one of his employees after the province upped the minimum wage. He said his customers weren't likely to pay more for a plate of bacon and eggs o accommodate the higher wages, so he had no choice but to lay her off.
He lamented that such do-good policies are actually killing the small town economy - forcing everyone to gravitate to big cities.
I told him about a Vonnegutian idea I had for a story. In it, the government decides that big cities are hazardous and that people would be happier in small towns. So it makes cities illegal. All the skyscrapers are demolished and small towns are erected evenly across the country and the citizenry is assigned new addresses and forced to move there.
"That would be nice," my friend said. He was commenting on how nice it would be if everyone had the small town mentality, not at the prospect of such an Orwellian maneuver.
My friend still runs his village restaurant and I still work at a newspaper (which is, in the long run, as necessary as a restaurant) and I like to think that at the end of the day, we go home and think that maybe we help make the world a better place.
In Williamstown, the restaurant is the Olde Bridge Cafe. It is a place where the old-timers congregate for "coffee college," where high school students and stay-at-home moms might go for an afternoon snack. It is not open for supper, though the nearby Jack's Pub is. Jack's Pub is a fine establishment and they make amazing chicken burgers, but it is not the village restaurant. And who could fault me for saying so?
-
But I don't live in a village. I live in a town and that means there are a number of places I can go for a meal. There's Christine's - right across the street from me - that offers the standard fare of burgers and fries and hot chicken sandwiches. There's the Quirky Carrot right next door to my office, which only serves healthy fare and how I wish I could train my palate to accept it. There's the Atlantic, where 90 per cent of what you order will be deep fried, and there is The Georgian House, which is true small town fine dining. And let us not forget the numerous pizza parlours and fast food franchises like Subway, KFC, Tim Hortons and Dairy Queen that round out my town's list of eateries.
And who could forget the Highland Piper, family dining at its finest, housed in a stone mill that's about 200 years old?
-
Restaurants are luxuries. By this I mean that they serve a purpose but they are not necessary for our survival. The farmer is necessary. The grocer is necessary. The restaurant is not. I am not powerless to purchase my own food and prepare it myself. Still, I inappropriate myself of this power and I choose to go to the restaurant because (a) I am lazy or (b) I crave social interaction or (c) something on the menu appeals to me.
Indeed, many restaurants are more conducive to our drive to seek others out than it is our drive to eat. Restaurants are usually abuzz with the rhythmic white noise of human conversation. Sit in the middle and it's a droning bowl of mush. Hone in on one table and you'll pick little snippets up. I went to an Ethiopian restaurant the other day (in a big city nonetheless) and I amused myself by eavesdropping on the conversation next to me. It was a young couple, probably on a first date. The woman said she had a degree in library science and was thinking about getting her Masters. The man said that the older he got, the less he feared confrontation. He said that he spent a year in the Middle East but I couldn't make out what he was doing there. His parents divorced when he was eight and his father rode a motorcycle.
I loved those two young people and I wish them happiness today.
-
If you telephone the village restaurant, the person answering the phone will likely just say "hello." They don't need to say "Village Restaurant" because they know everyone who calls is already intimately familiar with said restaurant.
This is hominess.
-
The other day, I was talking to a farmer who said that drinking and driving laws killed the small town bar. He said there was a time when it wasn't that big a deal to get all beered up and then drive home and that the police even had a nod-and-wink approach to it.
This is completely alien to my generation. We were always taught that drinking and driving is anaethema. To this day, I won't drive if I've even had a sip of alcohol and I once ended a friendship with someone who tricked me into getting into a car with a drunk driver.
-
I wandered into a village diner a few years ago. The diner was, and still is, run by my friend. He told me he had to lay off one of his employees after the province upped the minimum wage. He said his customers weren't likely to pay more for a plate of bacon and eggs o accommodate the higher wages, so he had no choice but to lay her off.
He lamented that such do-good policies are actually killing the small town economy - forcing everyone to gravitate to big cities.
I told him about a Vonnegutian idea I had for a story. In it, the government decides that big cities are hazardous and that people would be happier in small towns. So it makes cities illegal. All the skyscrapers are demolished and small towns are erected evenly across the country and the citizenry is assigned new addresses and forced to move there.
"That would be nice," my friend said. He was commenting on how nice it would be if everyone had the small town mentality, not at the prospect of such an Orwellian maneuver.
My friend still runs his village restaurant and I still work at a newspaper (which is, in the long run, as necessary as a restaurant) and I like to think that at the end of the day, we go home and think that maybe we help make the world a better place.
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