As a respite from the cares of the day, the Cod and the cinetrix will sometimes discuss their imaginary restaurant empire.* The flagship is called Gout, there is an all-offal place in Kenmore Sq called Foul Territory, etc.
However, the line between the simulated restaurant and the real one is getting blurry. In 05-06, a gonfalon of hype for Sascha devolved to an actual restaurant with a very brief lifespan. Now in 2007, at least in Williamsburg, opening seems almost beside the point. Witness the heralded Silent H.** With a menu like this, who needs to serve food?*** (You click on the airmail stamps to see dinner and lunch.) Now building on the momentum of not serving pho, Silent H is not serving food at all! I hope that in the years to come, we can see the restaurant existing as pure concept, freed of the pedestrian impediments of patrons and food.
*Someone should invent a game, a la Rail Baron, where you can scrap for those stars from Bib down home in Provence, and then race to be the first player to open a steakhouse in a casino. There could even be a card that was all like, "Your line cook has hepatitis A: Lose a turn."
**Given the trouble the roundeyes, this one included, have with pronouncing Vietnamese words, "Silent H" is a brilliant name. However, the way it is styled on the website frequently makes it look like "Silenth," which sounds like what one of the performers of the French Mistake at the end of Blazing Saddles might say, or perhaps the Staten Island Fairy.
***Ingredients and execution make a difference, but actually the menu looks a lot like what I used to see at Vietnamese joints in Algiers in the mid 90s, the bahn mi very much like what I'd grab to eat on the Fung Wah, albeit with a Billyburg premium!
UPDATE: The lads at EDSBS reveal the chilling depths of the Puck/Hep A story. It's Sterger's world, we just live in it.
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