A harmonic cacophony of broken dinner salad bowls rings out in the open concept kitchen of Cinematic Steaks, the restaurant that was infamously on the brink of breaking the Michelin star rating system after its Crushed Up Reeses's Pieces & Red Velvet Swirl Brownie Pudding was welcomed to the dessert menu as well as the hearts of countless patrons. The delicacy even earned the honor of having its own Facebook page designed for it by one of its many super fans which is truly one of the highest honors that can be bestowed upon a restaurant's dish if we are going to be one hundred percent transparent here. What makes the whole deal all the more heartwarming is the fact that Tom from MySpace (that's right - THAT Tom!) recently became a fan of the dessert's Facebook fan page because apparently he is really good with letting go of grudges against competing corporations that helped lead to the demise of his company...The widely renowned CURP & RVSBP fan page, purveyor of mystical munchy magic, even made it into his Top Eight friends (Tom jailbroke his Facebook account so that it would allow him to utilize the feature that was so popular on his former social media platform) in addition to the former CEO's Fave Five as he continues his campaign to be the next Time Person of the Year.
"Who the H-E-double garlic bread sticks did that?" The kitchen manager barked out while effortlessly scooping up a couple ramekins filled to the brim with Crushed Up Reese's Pieces & Red Velvet Swirl Brownie Pudding and tossing them onto the tray of a server who was passing by in a hurry, eager to make their next buck.
The entire kitchen staff simultaneously broke out into laughter as the kitchen manager's facial expression finally cracked too, despite her being the title belt holder as the champion of staring contests at the restaurant. Pots and pans began clanging or they might as well have been as the roof of the restaurant was on the cusp of being raised. This kind of positive energy from the head of the house seemed to emanate outwards toward the front of Cinematic Steaks as the wait staff seemed to conjure up an internal Five Hour Energy, ingested via beer bong straight to the soul. Speaking of Five Hour Energy drinks, those babies are divvied out like orange Tic Tacs (which are actually the only Tic Tacs or at least the only ones that are worth a sneeze) by the higher ups in the kitchen of the well known establishment where movies meet meats - the caffeine consumption of our favorite restaurant is through their fully reinforced roof.
"Y'all know how to carry plates, right - or do we have to have a special meeting this Saturday morning to get coached up on that one, too?" The kitchen manager cooed with a smug look pasted across her face as she shot a free throw (and bellowed out, "Kobe!", as is custom) with a dirty yellow rag into the hamper next to the back door. A chilly breeze whistled in through the door that was propped open with a colorful green, red and yellow striped empty cardboard box that previously contained a wide variety of green olives as the full harvest Moon glistened, playing the role of a night light for a nearby extended family of raccoons that was making a feast out of a plate of leftover beef tenderloin with a side of mashed potatoes.
All of a sudden, a hush fell over the dining area and the blinds on all the windows began to rattle about as if a brigade of hungry ghosts were trying to pass through them. The sound of forks and knives dropping to the table echoed throughout the restaurant as gasps filled the open spots in the air. One server who was particularly caught off guard capsized an entire tray of ice waters before wind sprinting straight out of the front door of the building. An important-looking woman who was flanked by two hulking, broad-shouldered brutes wearing bulky Aviator sunglasses and expensive three piece suits that were made in Italy by a descendant of Leonardo da Vinci bounded toward the host, a trembling teenager whose braces kept chattering against each other to make a metallic buzzing melody (not to mention the Oreo crumbs that were sprayed about in an undesirable manner) kind of like if bionic bumblebees became a thing (excuse me, WHEN bionic bumblebees become a thing...sorry I didn't mean to offend the Transformers franchise, Mark Wahlberg, please don't beat me up in a movie). The only proper way to describe the way the woman looked would be bold...everything about her was bold, starting with her shoulder pads that sharply jutted outward at a 180 degree angle and nearly tore her flowery and pleasant looking blouse and ending with her mustard hued Crocs, yeah you read that correctly, her mustard hued CROCS (no, she didn't spill a glop of Heinz Yellow Mustard on her brand new Crocs - believe it or not, they were designed to look that way!) - not only did this woman have no shame but she reveled in making strangers feel uncomfortable in her presence to the point of insanity. Maybe it wasn't a lack of comfort that she was seeking in particular but perhaps a general aura that she promoted in herself and projected towards strangers, an aura of superiority mixed with her head being lost in the clouds without even knowing the forecast. She slipped a Ulysses S. Grant (a fifty dollar bill for you non-president trivia experts out there) into the pants pocket of the bumbling host before gracefully making her way to a table that was sitting literally right smack dab in the center of the restaurant, like there should have been a spotlight that shone down on this table, its coordinates were that centrally located. I forgot to mention that this woman had a magnificent, brilliantly warm looking mink vest, think on it kind of like on the same track as the one that Mr. Burns sang that song about except this one most likely has less puppy fur than his ("Now made with fifty percent less puppies!"). So the lady walked all elegantly to the center stage table (if Cinematic Steaks itself was a table then this table would be that table's centerpiece; a replica of Round Table's little table thingy known as a pizza saver that rests in the middle of their pizzas, as it were) and draped her mink vest over the back of her chair like she owned the place before one of her secret agent dudes acted like a gentleman and pulled her chair out for her to sit down. A few of the remaining servers threw elbows at each other and boxed one another out like they were competing with Charles Barkley, the Round Mound of Rebound and one of the greatest sports analysts, nay people to ever grace a television screen, to grab a board of great significance, perhaps to win the national championship or save the local nuclear power plant from closing down or maybe even both if the screenwriters are feeling lackadaisical because they ate too much red meat. A scrawny female server in her twenties edged out the other servers for the final position of being able to serve the Mink Vest Lady, as she will be known from here on out until I reveal her real name to you in a Name Reveal Party. The scrawny female server stood proudly in front of the Mink Vest Lady like she has just won a city-wide footrace (without even hopping on the monorail and cheating, either!), feet firmly planted in the ground at shoulder width as she is setting up to take a free throw (to save the local clown college from finally closing its doors, once and for all, due to lack of FUNding...please don't be angry at me, just yell into a body pillow if you need to let out some feelings - we're gonna get through this blog post together, it's almost over, I promise) which is what you call it when you win the opportunity to serve a customer of the Mink Vest Lady's prestige. You see, the Mink Vest Lady isn't just any mink vest lady...she is the top food critic in all of Shallow Rock, New Mexico which is one of the best little unknown hamlets for cuisine in all the world! Not only is Mink Vest Lady a tougher judge of food and service than any other person who walks through that front door (the Simon Cowell for cows, if you will) but she is also the most generous tipper in the history of the service industry in the greater Southwest United States region.
"What can I offer you to drink this evening, Ms. Mopple? If you are ready for food too then I am all ears...if not, then take as much time as you need, don't sweat it, since when did it become a race to see who can get their order in the fastest, am I right? That would be, like, the most boring Survivor challenge of all time except it would really be more related to a reward for winning one of the challenges since that is a scenario in which the contestants would, in fact, be ordering food..." The server offered with a heavy dose of familiarity, nearly caught up in her own web of reality TV confusion, acting as if she might try to guess what the legendary food critic might venture to order on this fine Tuesday which is bizarrely the busiest day of the week for the restaurant due to the large contingency of regular taco consumers.
"Hello my dear, how are you doing today? I will have a couple Moscow Mules and a side salad with your freshest Romaine lettuce and your finest Ritz crackers crumpled up on top. I will also have a grilled cheese sandwich with Gouda cheese, Tapatio hot sauce and bacon bits sprinkled all over it with a little gloop of guacamole next to it." Ms. Mopple announced to the server but it might as well have been a popular single camera sitcom on NBC and she might as well have deadpanned at the camera afterward because it sounded a lot more like she was doing a 30 second commercial spot for Cinematic Steaks...where the small handful of carnivorous screenwriters go to eat (a tight knit group who has been hanging out together for years and make up the remainder of MySpace Tom's Top Eight friends on Facebook as well as filling the four remaining spots in his starting Fave Five lineup.)
The food arrived in a timely fashion, further bolstering the server's already bound-to-be hefty tip from the stylish Ms. Mopple.
"This..." Ms. Mopple shouted out with her mouth full as she gestured wildly at the grilled Gouda sammy and shook it around violently to further draw attention to the scene that was already bound to be spotted on TMZ in the next twenty four hours apparently having left the bulk of her manners in the backseat of the car service, eyes bugging out as if she had just come across a UFO parked in her driveway or maybe it was just one of the fellows who films a show about chasing UFOs on the History Channel who showed up at her front door and tried to hawk her a box set on Blu-ray of said show, "This...THIS, my friends, is what I call a grilled cheese sandwich."
Then Ms. Mopple deliberately stood up from the centerpiece table (but not before slapping a crisp Benjamin Franklin down in the middle of it and half sitting down for a second to use a giant steak knife as a substitute for a toothpick), put her infamous mink vest back on and walked out of the front door of Cinematic Steaks without speaking to a soul as her secret agent dudes grabbed their doggy bags and sheepishly followed her outside, on her mission to find a better grilled cheese sandwich. The weird thing, though, is that Ms. Mopple, the Mink Vest Lady herself, never did find a better grilled cheese sandwich or any other craft grilled cheese sandwich for that matter because on front of the following day's Shallow Rock Sentinel, right splat dab in the middle of the page, was her bold announcement of retirement from the food critic game, a stepping away from the industry that gave her everything, the profession that made Mopple a household name, the power outlet for her soul's hearty appetite. I guess once you make it to the top of Mount Everest, you just up and buy a farm in the middle of Iowa and build a cool lil baseball field on it and a bunch of people drive hundreds of miles to come see it...So what I am really trying to get at here is that if they ever make a prequel for Field of Dreams, go ahead and bet the over on altitude.
Buy Chris's books SPONGE CAKE & WHAT'S IN THE FRIDGE? on Amazon
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