With Smallsteps out of the house for a couple nights, my wife and I took the opportunity to try a pinchos restaurant in the city. Some friends have gone and on my wife's side it has got great reviews, and on my side - not so great - both said the food was good. Whether the place was great or terrible depends on the opinion of whether you like service, or don't like service, because this place the ordering is done through an app, you have to pick up your food from the kitchen counter when the app tells you, and only the drinks are brought to the table by staff.
We were required to order our drinks first, which sent SMS verification to set up the billing for the rest, and then the food. Since I was driving and my wife barely drinks, we both went with virgin mojitos. I don't want a virgin anything (other than snow), but they were pretty good and I always love fresh mint.
Then for the food.
For those that don't know, Pinchos (or pintxos if you are in Basque separatist country) are bite-sized snacks, so the idea is to order several to make a meal of them. We had a range of steak, chicken, feta, halloumi, fries, feta, garlic bread... it was plenty.
Since my wife gets full after about six bites, I ended up eating about three-quarters of the food. I should have assumed this and ordered less. Though the flavours were decent for most of it, a couple options were a bit too plain for my liking, like the grilled chicken on skewers was well, grilled chicken on skewers. Nothing interesting at all.
Oh, and this was what came on the booking number receipt:
Zimza thinks life is going to get more interesting for me. I hope the receipt gypsy is right, because life is pretty boring currently in the sense that I don't have enough paid work to keep me busy, or my pockets with something in them.
So as we were walking out after paying the bill through the app, the staff said bye to us and we were gone. My wife said that it was pretty good, because we didn't have to wait too long for the food, nor for waitstaff to come and ask us for things we wanted, and I thought it was pretty bad for the same reasons. Convenience and speed doesn't make the experience better for me, because I like to talk to people.
However, I also added, since the service is so bad most places these days, perhaps it is better to have "no service experience" than bad service experience. And I find that incredibly sad. The entire process and the direction we are heading with less human interaction, means service is going to get worse and worse, and more people will disconnect from people even further.
As I have posited, "restaurants" in the future will just be a factory of kitchens (probably manned by robots - or "cobots") and people will order through apps and have it delivered. Perhaps if you want to "dine-in" there will be a hole in the wall to pick food up from and sit down in a type of food court area. Everyone eats what they want, no one has to talk to anybody.
A night out on the town is getting worse.
Soon, the only experience we will get is vicariously through a screen.
One thing is for sure though,
There will be lots of virgins.
Taraz
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