The experience:
Diners enter the restaurant, and are seated at tables whose crisp white linen is curiously speckled with drips of wine and gravy. The napkins are crumpled on the seats, and the only cutlery at their place setting is the odd pieces that no-one ever uses.
They place their order as usual with their slightly tired-looking and scruffily dressed waiter.
Wine is served from a half-empty bottle.
After the usual wait, the food comes but it looks like it is someone else's half-eaten meal! The knife and fork are on the plate, in the food. There are bite-marks here...
How it works:
The waiters are made up to look tired, and their clothes are distressed by theatrical costumiers.
The food in this restaurant is of the highest quality, freshly cooked to order by the chef and her (or his) assistants.
When the food is ready to be plated, the second team of food artists takes over, and arranges the items on the plate so that it appears that the meal has been half eaten and then abandoned by a previous diner. Special denture-shaped knives are used to take bite-shaped pieces out of the edge of breads, cheeses, and meats. Sauces are smeared subtly up the blades and tines of knives and forks. The highest attention is paid to hygene and quality at all times.
Enjoy.-- pocmloc, Dec 17 2018 Is it half as expensive, too ?-- 8th of 7, Dec 17 2018 Continuing the theme, when you visit the toilets is there rather too much evidence of them having been recently used?-- hippo, Dec 17 2018 I'm not sure about this as a restaurant. However, I would heartily endorse a Leftovers range of chilled foods. A typical packet might include three tablespoons of lasagne (in a foil container, with burnt bits), two cold sausages, three slices of ham, a quarter of a tin of Spam, and 1/3rd of a portion of crispy beef in chilli. Of course, contents should vary at random.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Dec 17 2018 Indeed - Christmas lunch leftovers are better than the actual lunch-- hippo, Dec 17 2018 [+] for [hippo].-- pocmloc, Dec 17 2018 It's twice the price, of course.-- pocmloc, Dec 17 2018 That would mean it's effectively four times the price.
If you were getting the full meal, but charging double, then yes, it would be twice the price.
But the meal is clearly described as "half-eaten". Thus if you pay the "normal" price for it, but are getting only half the amount of food, then it's already "twice the price". Paying double, for half the amount, is four times ...-- 8th of 7, Dec 18 2018 I'm pretty sure someone has proposed this before. Possibly Miles Kington, some time in the 1980s.-- pertinax, Dec 18 2018 Also, the title always reminds me of the Lefortovo Prison in Russia.-- pertinax, Dec 24 2018 Why? How were the leftovers at that prison? :-)-- tumblewit, Dec 24 2018 Absent. Edible food in Siberia is a bit of a luxury.-- RayfordSteele, Dec 24 2018 Entrees could be kids meals, half finished or untouched because of yucky vegetables or something not cut as a triangle or a square.
In fact, it could be an entire degustation where you work your way through a leftover Christmas dinner.
You enter the restaurant, not through the door though, but through the window. There could be atmospheric snoring coming from the hallway. Torn wrapping paper is all over the ground. If you hunt for it, there may be a working christmas cracker under some.
To keep things moving, you have thirty minutes to eat your dinner. Before the next patrons arrive.-- mylodon, Jan 17 2024 [+/-]-- Voice, Jan 17 2024 [+] Don’t worry about the price being one half or full. A joint of this caliber can charge anything the traffic will bear. Note that the hygiene and the chef and assistants are consummate pros.
I would insist that the cutlery be flimsy plastic to replicate the tools found in the bottom of the take-out box with the half-eaten meal. Napery is flimsy paper napkins, and ‘plates’ are take-out boxes with the lids closed. The reveal is done by the tired and disinterested waitron. Perhaps the aluminum foil or foam box could exhort the user to “Recycle, Reduce, and Reuse, Like we Do!”-- minoradjustments, Jan 17 2024 random, halfbakery