Love Letter to a Failed Restaurant
You lived and died in a Southern California shopping center. A center new and devoid of personality, anchored by a Trader Joe’s. There you were, by the elevator, a chic restaurant with a color palette of yellows, silvers, and whites. A bar stacked with expensive liquor and a fire pit on the patio, your little fig logo topping it off. I noticed you vaguely and never ate in you. I turned my sights elsewhere, like the sports gastropub serving up burgers and the açaï bowl place that also offered “juice cleanses.”
Around Thanksgiving, my sister and I drove by you. We were going to eat somewhere that wasn’t you.
“That place is dead,” she said of you. “Nobody goes there. They have singles nights at the bar there. I wonder if anyone shows up. Probably nobody.”
Wouldn’t it be a dream if people showed up? For you to be a piece of bread that could draw these little water droplet people out of their homes, houses lined up in these cushy gated communities where everything looks the same? These little single water droplets could be sucked into your fluffy goodness and huddle. You could be a cool place. You could be filled with awe-inspiring people.
But you are more single than I have ever been in my entire life. Lonelier than when I ate lunch alone in middle school. I survived and here I am today, loved by many friends and a smartie boyfriend who plays the stock market. I don’t need to have tons of customers and get great reviews to stay alive. I can exist as long as I eat food, any food, and don’t fall victim to fatal tragedies. I am one of the lucky ones. I am not a restaurant, nor do I own one.
I never set foot inside your doors. Maybe because my sister put a shame label on you. But you were a shame all on your own, with your vacant chairs and sleek beauty nobody would touch with a long pole. Your owner must have lied in bed, crying, hoping tomorrow someone would come and give you their love. The waiters must have been bored. They might have thought, my job is easy, but I wish my job were exciting. Now this will be stamped on my resume forevermore. All while you sweated bullets and shedded tears, wondering, will I ever be loved? Will I die today?
I walked by you near Christmastime, headed for yet another açaï bowl. You were finally closed up, crashed and burned. A sign made of computer paper hung on the window, adhered with Scotch tape. “Furniture for sale,” it read in 60-point Helvetica with a phone number in smaller font below. I tried not to look past the sign into your gutted interiors.
Does this really need to happen? It’s like that microstory about the baby shoes. I’d be surprised if anyone took your chairs. Why would the wealthy people in this area want abandoned restaurant furniture? I’m not rich like that but I couldn’t touch you this time either, just like when you were alive.
I wish I could have made it all better. But I was too afraid to eat in you. To tell you the truth, I wish you were cool. I wish you could be a money laundering scheme or a little neighborhood dive. But now you’re the neighborhood scar.
I wonder if things would be better if I could put you somewhere else. I wonder which neighborhood would hail you. Little Italy? La Jolla? Maybe another city? New York? LA?
I want to pick you up and gently put you down in a place that will shoot you to the stars.
They say sociopaths are people who treat people like furniture. But what if I love furniture? What if I cry when I see buildings hit by wrecking balls on TV? I’d love to take you, all of you, all the failed restaurants, stack them together, and build a city. Every single establishment would get all my love. I’d take in visitors, but they’d be evenly distributed so every restaurant would have its day. Everyone would make tons of money. Everyone would be so loved. You would be loved.
Catherine Sinow lives in San Diego. Her writing has appeared in publications such as Menacing Hedge, Summerset Review, and FRiGG. She was also once shortlisted for a Broken Pencil Zine Award. Her other work can be found at catherinesinow.com.