THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, February 4, 1996 TAG: 9601310033
SECTION: REAL LIFE PAGE: K2 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: REAL MOMENTS
SOURCE: BY DAVE ADDIS, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 75 lines
FRIDAY WAS SLOW, but warmish and sunny. A good day to stop by a favorite old lunch haunt, relax over a hot meal and thumb through the out-of-town papers. I crossed the street in a good mood.
I re-crossed the street 20 minutes later troubled that another brick had been chiseled away from the footers of civilized living.
My favorite lunch place had ``gone buffet.''
The menu was still offered, but the waitress' recommendation was clear: ``You want the buffet?'' Well, why not. The food had always been good here. Excellent, in fact.
There's no need to wallow in the reality. It was like most buffet fare: some hot, some cold, some wet, some dry, and largely lacking in appeal. Nothing was spiced.
Luckily, I'd wandered in a few minutes before noon. At 12 straight up nearly 40 people fell upon the buffet table in a good-natured tornado of spoons, arms and elbows. They packed their plates high and wide, never mind that the various sauces and gravies were mixing into a mongrel stew in the center. The ethic was take-all-you-want, and each seemed determined to defend his right to a fair share. They groped their way from tureen to tureen, heaping it on. Their eyes glistened.
The service was far from what it used to be, but nobody seemed concerned. McEverybody's has conditioned us to fetch our own napkins and whatnot. To expect otherwise, especially at lunch, now has a wisp of elitism about it.
By 12:07 the steam table had been stripped nearly clean. Hardly a morsel remained. The orphans of Bosnia could not have emptied it quicker.
Every seat in the place was taken and several people were lined up for a run at the trough. There was an air of happy tumult about the place. Everywhere but my booth. I'd been there about 15 minutes and lunch was over already. I began to feel guilty for taking up four spaces by myself while others were waiting for a seat. I fidgeted, folded my papers and reached for my coat.
Once this was a place where you could lounge over lunch, conduct an interview, do a little business, table-hop to visit with friends. You could ask the kitchen to heat up or tone down the spices, depending on your mood. The head waitress knew me by sight, and from time to time would ask how the work was going as she toted up my check.
Now the place had the look and feel of the Saturday bazaar in old Jerusalem.
I left my usual tip - more out of habit than appreciation - and headed for the exit. The phone was ringing off the hook, a line of diners was jostling to get in, and the woman at the counter seemed too harried to take my money. I counted out the correct change, left it with the check by the register, and slipped out the door.
A colleague who knows the place said the owner confessed recently that he'd ``gone buffet'' because his dinner business was dying and he needed to attract new trade. A downtown restaurant can have a tough time of it when most of its public flees for the suburbs at 5.
The decision made sense, and my indignation started to feel petty. The owners have a right - a duty, actually - to wring every penny of income from their investment. The diners - many of them, I imagined, on short lunch hours and trickle-down paychecks - have a right to get the most for their hard-fought $4.95. If you want to stay in business, you give them what they want.
Nobody, after all, is going to get rich making sure malingerers like me have a quiet nook where they can dawdle over the newspapers.
But favorite hangouts are like favorite friendships: We don't have that many and often they take patience. We shouldn't give them up easily.
Next time I'll go across the street long after the 12 o'clock rush, I reasoned, and request a booth far from the steam table. Maybe the waitresses will have caught their breath by then. I'll order from the menu. Together, perhaps, we can resurrect a little corner of the place where, for years, I've been able to sip a second pot of tea while I finish the sports pages. by CNB