tangentalizingly delicious

Wednesday May 24, 2006

The other day I was doing some dishes and letting my mind wander. Since I was preparing to start dinner, my mind was wandering in relation to foodstuffs, and since almost every time my mind wanders it wanders to me running my own company, I started thinking about Rob’s Dream Restaurant, a concept I think I’ve touched on before, but am far too lazy to find and link to.

So, the basic premise is “Gosh, wouldn’t it be cool to own a restaurant?” As with Rob’s Dream Corporation (a notional company), Rob’s Dream Restaurant (a notional eatery) doesn’t actually need to be profitable or anything realistic. It is, after all, a dream.

Rob’s Dream Restaurant (a notional eatery) is a fairly old-to-me concept, which originated from Dr. Bob’s Laboratory (another notional eatery). My dad put himself through school as a bartender, and my brother was a bartender for a very long time, so the both of them have invested serious thought in having their own establishments, a fantasy I decided to glom onto, because otherwise I might have to have my own original ideas.

Dr. Bob’s Laboratory (another notional eatery) is, I think, different for each of us. I’m not entirely clear on what my dad dreams of in a restaurant, but I think it’s a neighbourhood bar type establishment, where regulars hang out and everyone is strongly influenced by Cheers. For my brother it’s a night club, with fancy shooters served in test tubes, and various apparatus doing various things, and I don’t know exactly.

I don’t really have a strong concept of what my Dr. Bob’s Laboratory (another notional eatery) is. I have thoughts that include touchscreen tabletops which contain the menu and can handle drink requests and offer nutritional information and predictive cooking times and such. I have ruminations of lunch time and afternoon information sessions where people sit around chomping hamburgers and falafal pitas while some expert yammers and draws on a chalk board.

But mostly I’ve abandoned my concept of Dr. Bob’s Laboratory (another notional eatery) in favour of Rob’s Dream Restaurant (a notional eatery), I guess mostly just for branding purposes or something.

Rob’s Dream Restaurant (a notional eatery) is probably only open through the middle of the day, from 11ish to 2ish. I’m not a fan of working in the nights and evenings, and the whole purpose of the fantasy is to have a place for people to ooh and ahh over my food. The menu consists of the things I love to eat, especially for lunch, like burritos and pad thai and hamburgers.

The other day when I was wandering in thought while washing dishes I didn’t think of any of that stuff really, that’s all just background information. What I thought about was incorporating the concepts of Second Space into Rob’s Dream Restaurant (a notional eatery).

Second Space, as you’ll recall, is the idea for office space that I’ve sort of been working on (but recently mostly just ignoring) wherein individuals and maybe small companies buy memberships in the organization and get access to a shared space with desks and coffee and office-related services where they can do some work outside of the home.

A really poor description of what I’m thinking of here is like Benihana’s mixed with a hair salon. Before you think of teriyaki wigs, let me explain a bit more.

Benihana’s is probably the canonical North American example of teppanyaki, where a Japanese chef prepares and cooks dinner on a griddle immediately in front of the diners. Benihana’s is a large chain of such restaurants.

Rob’s Dream Restaurant (a notional eatery) pretty much starts each imagining as a diner type place where I’m interacting with all the customers and such, giving them food directly etc., which is very similiar to the tappanyaki experience.

Hair salons, to confuse things momentarily, very often work on a rental basis. The stylists rent the chairs and take advantage of the common services (like hair washing and drying, the discounts of buying product in bulk, etc.), a setup very similar to that I’ve been imagining for Second Space.

Combine the two and you have chefs renting cooking space on a small scale inside a restaurant. It’s sort of like a food court in a mall, but on a much smaller scale.

Each workstation would consist of a griddle or a grill, some preparation space, and some seats. They can be rented in the short term, maybe you just want to make dinner for friends and you don’t have the resources on your own. In the middle term, maybe you want to start a restaurant but want to figure out an appealing menu before going whole hog. Or in the long term, maybe you just want to be open a few hours a day and it doesn’t make sense to lease an entire store, hire all the staff and such.

Dishwashing and bussing and perhaps even service could be handled by the house. If a flat rental fee can be worked out that covers all that, then the renting chefs could keep all the earnings for themselves, or maybe it would be better for the house to take a percentage of the bills on top.

Sigh. One of those things to do if I ever need to lose a whole lot of money very quickly.