See You Tonight

The title of this entry refers to the slogan of the Keg Steakhouse chain of restaurants. I like the Keg. It's reasonably priced, casual and the food's pretty good overall. I particularly enjoy heading to the Keg Mansion on Toronto's Jarvis street. It's like going back in time, given the enormous house once belonged to one of Toronto's most wealthy families - the Masseys.  It's also said to be haunted. When my wife and I head to the mansion, we always ask for a table in The Library, a fantastic little nook that is quieter than the rest of the beautiful, sprawling 2 level restaurant. But I digress.

Last night we decided to  have ourselves an evening at the Keg Mansion. In fact, our day was structured around it. We had to run some errands but we decided to take a long walk through the downtown core as well. We'd eventually make our way north east, first stopping for a cocktail at The Blake House, another mansion sized restaurant/bar on Jarvis (formerly The Red Lion). It too is a fine establishment. We sat in the bar area right beside a cozy wood-burning fireplace, and it was shaping up to be a lovely Saturday evening. I even had a $100 Keg gift card which made things just a smidge sweeter.

Finishing up our drinks we took the 5 minute walk to The Keg. I requested a table in The Library. Other tables were available but we were fine with waiting, and we happily headed upstairs to the bar, as it was to be approximately 45 minutes. Enjoying a glass of wine and conversation, the time flew and soon enough our little vibrating buzzy thing lit up. We were sat at the best table in The Library and ordered some appetizers first. We always order them separately from the mains so we can take our time and enjoy the evening on our schedule, not the restaurant's. We ordered a caesar salad to share and their jumbo shrimp cocktail. And, the complimentary ever delicious warm loaf of bread and butter was also delivered to our table.

As we readied to order our mains, the server came by. She mentioned that there might be a bit of a delay, since the kitchen had just lost all it's power. No problem we thought. We weren't in a rush. Shortly after that I headed to the men's room, and noticed that the place seemed to be getting quieter and when folks were leaving, new customers weren't being seated, which is a bizarre sight for one of Toronto's busiest restaurants, not to mention it was Saturday evening. Hordes of servers gathered chatting in the kitchen serving area, clearly not having anything to do.

Returning to my table, the manager appeared and mentioned that the kitchen was still without power, but not to worry - their on call electrician was on his way...from Whitby. He mentioned it would be about an hour before he might arrive, depending on traffic. Now I'm no high-falutin' CEO of a major restaurant chain, but me thinks it might not be a bad idea to line up a 24-hour emergency electrical firm that is not a billion miles away from the centre of Canada's universe. We're not in some podunk dustbowl here. This is downtown fucking Toronto...in prime fucking time.

But, I thought it best not to make a big fuss, so I slowly pulled the steak knife away from the manager's throat. After all, it wasn't his fault he's a bumbling jackass who couldn't organize a piss up a rope.  As I placed the knife back on the table, I straightened my tie and calmly sat back down. "See that steak knife?", I asked the manager. "Yes sir. Yes I do", he replied shakily. "Do you know what should be sitting beside that steak knife?", I enquired. "A steak, sir?" I snapped back: "You're goddamn right...a goddamn steak is goddamn right!".

At this, the manager cleared his throat and mentioned that our Keg sized 9oz glasses of wine and Keg jumbo cocktail shrimp were on the house, and he even offered to wrap up the remaining bit of Keg complimentary bread.

See you tonight my ass.

Killing Them Softly

If you haven't seen the film Killing Them Softly, I highly recommend it. Nowadays Brad Pitt can afford to take better roles while leveraging his notoriety to send a message if he so chooses. Such is the case with this film.

It's essentially a commentary on how Western society in particular has become de-sensitized to the realities of  war. We have economic interests in some shit-hole part of the world? No problem, just send uneducated grunts who have no future anyway.

But the film gets the message across in a clever, accessible way. It features expendable low-level hoodlums who are just trying to get by, and although they're criminals you still feel a degree of empathy for them since they seem to have no other options in their pathetic lives.

Having said all that, it's easy to point the finger at governments and take the moral high ground. We're all equally guilty because all of us benefit from said economic interests, so we too have blood on our hands. And speaking of blood, there's also a parallel to that delicious rare steak you consumed over the weekend.

Not tonight honey, I've got a headache.

Thanks to Meat Processing Inc., chicken, turkey, fish and beef magically appear in our pristine supermarkets. We conveniently forget about the horror often experienced by these creatures as they shuffled off this mortal coil and directly onto our forks. So you see, we are all killing them softly.

But it's simply a characteristic of where we are in the food chain. Your wife sees a spider on the wall, you're dispatched to kill it. Personally, I will always make an attempt to release any sort of creature into the wild, provided of course it requires nominal effort. And even then, the chances that this insect survives in it's explosively new environment are slim, but at least I'm giving it a fair shot.

So next time you're at the gourmet burger shop and order a ground up cow topped with a double helping of hacked up pig, at least pause and have a little bit of appreciation. In the billions of years since the universe began, things have aligned themselves just so you could shove that greasy burger down your neck.

It easily could have been the other way around.