In this restaurant, what you pay for is a plate of finger food, and it's all about dipping. in the middle of the restaurant are buckets of every kind of dipping sauce in the style of a buffet.

on the menu: fries/chips, cheese sticks, tortilla chips, onion rings, fresh veggies, fresh fruits, bread sticks, chicken bits, egg rolls, graham crakers... anything anybody dips into anything.

on the sauce buffet: salsa, ranch dressing, guacamole, sweet & sour sauce, hot fudge, marshmallow, melted cheese things, maple syrup, hollandaise, sour cream... all the things you'd want to dip anything into.

you pay for the plate of whatever it is you want to dip. then you can dip it in anything you want.

would have to figure out how to keep kids from mixing all the sauces together and daring their friends to dip pickles in it, wasting all the profits.
-- changokun, Jan 14 2007

The Melting Pot http://www.meltingpot.com/
A fondue restaurant chain. [craigts, Jan 16 2007]

Pommes Frites http://newyork.city....com/review/7087532
French Fries, and 30 dipping sauces. [jutta, Jan 19 2007]

Béarnaise Sauce http://en.wikipedia...iki/Bearnaise_sauce
[zen_tom, Jan 19 2007]

Mmm, fried chicked in hot fudge sauce.
-- angel, Jan 14 2007


Restaurant stays open for a week, till the first mass salmonella poisoning.
-- BunsenHoneydew, Jan 14 2007


I can't stand it when dips get mixed.. I'm afraid i cannot give you a bun, for i just refuse to dip my bread stick in a salsa mixed with hints of marshmallow and guacamole.. sorry.
-- deoxyribonucleic, Jan 14 2007


So long as double dipping is punished by immediate execution, I am all for it.

One dipped bun for you.
-- Galbinus_Caeli, Jan 14 2007


Okay I would rather picture this restaraunt having special plates that are molded with small dipping bowl all attached and ready, and the pots of sauce having ladles.
-- PollyNo9, Jan 15 2007


Yes, I agree with Polly. And let me say, "YUM!" Would surely succeed as a national chain.
-- flynn, Jan 15 2007


Can't get behind this one. I fear the world is becoming overwhelmed by sauce food, instead of food that tastes good without the extra crap on it. You can't order anything anymore without being asked if you want sauce.

Also: ranch dressing is not a sauce.
-- Noexit, Jan 15 2007


Bun for you, but yes, there need to plenty of bowls. Sometimes the food is merely a medium for the sauce, dip, salsa, chutney, or what have you. It is much more polite to load a chip with salsa that eat salsa with a spoon.
-- Salted Nuts, Jan 15 2007


So is this like fondue? or really, mega-fondue?
-- Dominov, Jan 16 2007


I agree with 21Q on the sanitary issue of open buckets of sauces.
-- xandram, Jan 16 2007


absolutely; there would be bowls or deep plates with divisions. you wouldn't even be allowed to bring your plate of food to the sauce bar.

you'd order your fries then go get some sauce[s] while they cook.

the buffet would be just as sanitary as any buffet already out there... sneeze guards, ladles, heat lamps, double-boilers, etc.

i imagine you could pull off a fondue-like thing... maybe that would be a menu item, due to its expense.

marinara, pizza sauce, melted velveeta, ketchup, mustard, honey, mayonnaise, pickle relish, that tasty rosemary sauce they serve with the chips at jack quinn's...

taquitos, tortillas, sopapillas, pasta, cookies, frozen bananas, etc...

and don't give me no fish bones just because you're disgusted by the idea of dipping onion rings into maple syrup.

...and ranch dressing is 'saucy.' (maybe that should be the name of the restaurant.)
-- changokun, Jan 16 2007


Speaking of mixing sauces, my dad used to always say that no man should be dipping his pickle into another man's sauce.
-- Jscotty, Jan 16 2007


Oh god [Jscotty] I don't think I'm ever going to eat again.
-- BunsenHoneydew, Jan 19 2007


One of my favourite sauces, Béarnaise, on chips (les frites francais). I've never tried to make it (it's supposed to be quite tricky) but am willing to give it a go. I recon it would be great over a boiled egg on toast.
-- zen_tom, Jan 19 2007


i had a girlfriend like this once.
-- benfrost, Jan 19 2007


//i had a girlfriend like this once//

Who looked good through high-powered binoculars?

Thats stalking, the comment on her being your girlfriend is all in your deluded mind ;-))

How about pizza dipped in LSD.
-- webfishrune, Jan 19 2007


Hmmm...Tijuana has a reputation as a seedy border town where you can buy almost anything that's illegal in the US, so I don't think "Tijuana Flats" sounds like a classy name for a restaruant. Besides, it reminds me of Rocky Flats, the contaminated nuclear weapons processing plant near where I live.

As for the idea of the restaraunt, I don't know how well this would do by itself, unless it's just a tiny little place like that Pommes Frites place in New York. Other than that, a wonderful idea, just as long as you include ketchup mixed with a little tabasco sauce.
-- discontinuuity, Jan 19 2007


Genius
-- gomer, Jul 29 2008


I've been to Tijuana Flats - I liked it. I think there are 60 or 70 sauces available now, including "Chet's Gone Mad" which supposedly has 1.5 million Scoville units of hotness. Too much for me, but would the OP's restaurant have such options?
-- Gamma48, Jun 17 2009


Dip food into sauce, suck sauce off without eating food. Repeat until you are replete, sick, attacked by other diners, or asked to leave.

This has been an illustration of why I must, regretfully, dip a fishbone in your tartare.

Naturally I don't eat that way myself. Not even if nobody is looking.
-- English Bob, Jun 17 2009


I voted against it because of the buckets, I don't want to dip my food into a bucket some snotty kid just stuck his arm in. Get rid of the buckets and I'ed be much happier.
-- Hirudinea, Jun 17 2009


Give each patron an ice cube tray (or something similar). The sauces are in pump containers for those that are sufficiently uniform and low viscosity. The remaining sauces are in containers similar to a sald bar with ladles sized to match the ice cube.

The patron fills the tray with as many sauces as they want before returning to their table. Minimal risk of cross contamination, and minimal chance of contamination back to the container as long as a fresh ice cube tray is used each time.
-- MechE, Aug 03 2010



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