Want to Feel Like a Buffoon? I'll Tell You How!

I can think of dozens of illustrations from my life that will guide you if you are on a quest to look like a buffoon. Off the top of my head I can think of the following awesome events: "Dancing Queen: The Time I Had a Lemon Thrown at My Head While Trying to Dance at a Disco"; "Creating a Scene: Falling into a Decorative Pond at the American Embassy in Brasilia While Demonstrating a Scene from Superman in Front of Admiring Friends"; and "Flooring It: How to Speed Over a Grassy Median in the Target Parking Lot Instead of Backing Out of a Parking Space as Intended."

Ah, fun times, and what a lovely stroll down Memory Lane that was! I still laugh delightedly when I think about gathering the courage to dance at the disco, only to have some oaf hurl a lemon at my head. Ha ha! But, I've gotten sidetracked by these amazing memories, and really there's no need: I felt like a buffoon mere hours ago, so please allow me to share it with you while it's fresh.

Because we spend all week making homemade meals and eating snacks that adhere to the Swank Diet, we like to go out for a change of pace on the weekends. HAHAHA, okay, I can't type that with a straight face. We always went out to eat on the weekends, it has nothing to do with Swank. Somehow, it just sounds better to say it's in response to slaving away in the kitchen all week than to say it's because we like to eat out. But there. I said it: we like to eat out. It's been only slightly challenging to find Swank-friendly options at local restaurants. Typically, I order fish and ask that it not be sauteed in butter or order pasta with tomato sauce and vegetables.

Today, we decided to try a place we've never been: Vapiano's  -- my mistake, a quick look at their website reveals it's VAPIANO, no apostrophe or "s." My bad. Okay, so VAPIANO is an Italian place at our nearby mall. It looked pleasant enough; rather upscale-ish (lots of black-and-white photographs of super-attractive people on the walls, and an herb garden enclosed in a teeny greenhouse in the middle of the restaurant).

I guess if I'd stood on the table in a sassy, hip-thrusting pose while my husband pointedly ignored me, we'd have fit in better? 

One rather jarring note at the entrance was a bowl of loose gummy bears by the hostess stand. I guess they're the upscale Italian equivalent of the bowl of pastel mints at old-timey restaurants that you should never, ever eat because of the trace amounts of fecal matter that have been transferred from the hands of people pawing around in the bowl. I saw this on Oprah. (Also from that poo-themed Oprah show: always choose the first bathroom stall at the movies; it's the least contaminated.)

So we entered VAPIANO and promptly encountered the Mumbling Host. It's possible we couldn't hear him over the rather pretentious 80s music (you know, the kind the cool, artsy, troubled kids who wore lots of black listened to). He mumbled something about the pasta being cooked fresh and gestured over his shoulder to where, yes, there was some poor fellow trapped in a glass box making pasta and hanging it over metal arms to dry. He then would jam a serving size into a small brown paper bag and hustle it over to where the cooks were stationed. The environmental impact of this performance wasn't lost on me (couldn't they take the pasta over in reusable bowls?), but now our host was mumbling something and thrusting a credit card-like thingee into our hands as he vaguely pointed to a cluster of sullen-looking people standing behind a counter. Gripping our weird credit cards, we were cast adrift into the restaurant.

We stood aimlessly next to the host's station, hoping he'd see our burgeoning panic and step in with further guidance. Alas, he had other fish to fry. We edged closer to the sullen-looking people behind the counter. Over one of their heads was a sign that said "Pasta." Okay...this seemed a likely place to start the ordering process. I looked hopefully at the young man. He looked back at me impassively. Couldn't he tell we didn't know what the hell we were doing? I pleaded with him with my eyes. No dice.

Feeling more like a horse's ass with each passing second, I marshaled my courage and purposefully strode the two remaining steps to the counter, where the cook still regarded me with those soulless shark eyes.

"Hi!" I squeaked. "So, do we, like, order here?" I gave him my most winning smile.

"Yep," he said, thoroughly underwhelmed by my winning smile. (Must practice that.)

"Okay, it's our first time [DUH] and we're not, hahaha, totally sure how this works. Do we give you this?" I asked, propelling the credit card thingee (CCT) toward him.

"I'll take that when I'm done. What do you want?"

"Oh, boy, okay..." I said, frantically scouring the menu. "Um, pasta with tomato sauce and spinach," I concluded. He looked at me, the very picture of boredom. "Type of pasta?"

"Oh, right! Ummmm [more frantic menu-scouring], papardelle!"

I was exhausted from the stress. My husband ordered and we went off in search of drinks. There was a swanky bar off to one side, but I thought I had heard the Mumbling Host mention a soda fountain somewhere. We edged over to the bar, the CCT still gripped in our hands. There were several patrons hovering around the bar, so we lurked off to the side, looking around in ever-increasing dismay. It was a Day to Feel Like a Buffon, for sure.

Finally, a manager-sort hustled over, seeing we were clearly in distress, and asked if he could get us drinks. Hallelujah! We ordered drinks without too much trouble, except my husband had to scan his CCT over some infrared light at a precise angle or it wouldn't work. Oh, boy. This was quite a production. I began to feel the first inklings of irritation, where before I had felt merely bewildered and intimidated.

Drinks in hand, we set off to find a seat. No ordinary booths or tables at this restaurant, no, sir! There were stools and benches framing long wooden tables, at the center of which was a fresh plant -- basil or rosemary, from what I could tell. Okay, that was pretty cute.

Our personal basil plant. Are you supposed to use it? Has it been washed? What would Oprah do? I avoided it. 

We picked our table and clambered onto the stools, only to realize our food was ready at the Counter of Sullen People. We slid off our stools and made our way, with some trepidation, toward the food. It looked quite good. I asked the gent behind the counter for a glass so I could get some water. He handed me a glass. It had detritus of an organic nature on it. I asked for another. This one, too, had detritus on it. I meekly took it back to my stool and slumped there until my husband offered to get a THIRD glass (from a different Sullen Counter Person). This one had something stuck on it too, but it did not smear into a booger-like glob when I tried to remove it, so I decided this was the best it was going to get. I flaked off the bit of dried-on tomato and ate my lunch.

The food looked better before I attacked it like a starving animal.

As I said, both entrees looked good and tasted good. It was just the elaborate and confusing set up combined with the cook's 'tude (as the kids say) that left me feeling a bit like a buffoon. Oh, and the decor. See for yourself:

Mysterious objets d'art in the ladies' room. I examined that red thing at some length. I still have no idea what it is. A gourd? Corn cob?

Yep, that's a tree. In the middle of a table. Enough said. 

So there you have it. The latest in a (likely never-ending) series of Episodes During Which I Feel Like a Buffoon. Next time, though, I'll be well-versed in the ways of this highfalutin establishment and will sail in there in my all-black ensemble (featuring sensible shoes; heels are no longer an option for me, sadly), stand imperiously on a table, and order my pasta with authority.

p.s. Remember those gummy bears? I spotted a casualty of the restaurant languishing outside the front door. In the absence of Wee Squeaky, this is my fun picture of the day.

"Don't make me go back in there!"