While we were in Hvar there was this slow food restaurant we were going to try but the guy had been an asshole the year before so we hesitated to go there. The concept was brought about by the French who decided in their typical anti-American ire that our notion of fast food was ruining the world so they were going to introduce slow food and save the world. The irony is that none of those wise Frenchmen have obviously stepped a foot in New Orleans where the concept of slow food is ubiquitous.
I was at Whole Food and ordered my mother an oyster poboy from the sandwich counter – it’s all alien, on one hand, great oyster poboys but it is Whole Wallet for goodness sakes and the menu says, “Dressed means Lettuce, Tomato, and Mayonnaise” which makes me wonder who the hell they think is ordering these sandwiches – everyone and their mama in this town knows that dresses is lettuce, tomato, and mayonnaise – DUH! – but I digress, while the oysters are frying, the woman in front of me who ordered the California Club (go figure) is watching her sandwich in mid preparation when another WF employee walks up jiggling her keys and holding her cell phone and engages the prep employee in conversation about what she is going to do when she gets home (do some laundry, watch some show she taped on cable, see about what she is going to have for dinner) and I swear as we all sit there and wait on this California Club, I look around me and notice no one, not a single person in this line or there abouts, has flinched at all.
We are all listening (not raptly) to the dreary itinerary of this stranger’s afternoon, the sandwich fixings have halted, the line has back up, and finally, because she had maybe gotten to the part where she was then going to brush her teeth and go to bed, she jiggled her keys and walked away. The prep person just turns nonchalantly and asks, “did you want that dressed?” – slow food, as if.