Waiter, there’s a soup in my iPad
Posted on | June 14, 2010 | 1 Comment
I’ve long harbored a desire to have a meal at Pearl, a house of noms widely regarded as being a bit of alright by those who ought to know. It certainly looks like the kind of place i like – creative, contemporary cooking which draws from a variety of styles in a schwanky, but not wanky, setting.
But my enthusiasm dropped several notches last week when I read that proprietor Chris Lucas intends to supplement printed menus with Apple’s new plaything, the iPad*. In an article in The Australian, Lucas enthuses about a specially written app which will allow diners to read about each dish in his restaurant, plus the wine list, and delve into great detail about specific aspects – presumably cooking styles, ingredients and their origin or some such thing. The app will also recommend wine matches and provide tasting notes on all things drinkable.
What I want to say to Chris, if he is reading this, is: Do not be a dick.
I can think of at least a dozen places where I would happily use an iPad in the place of a book, a tv, a laptop, newpapers, a music player…well, you get the idea. But the thought of sitting around the table at a relatively classy restaurant while my dining companions tap, swipe, pinch and scroll their way through a detailed multimedia glossary of the meal they are about to enjoy does not appeal. Not at all.
Restaurant dining is a social activity. Sure, the food is at the center, but the the real joy comes from the company you share it with, from the atmosphere of the room, and from the interaction with the staff on the floor. Unfortunately, screens have an inherently detrimental effect on interaction between people, especially screens which are fundamentally designed for a single user.
Lucas says it’s all about catering to his diner’s desire to know more about what they are eating. “It doesn’t matter whether it’s ingredients, origins of produce or wine, and particularly Old World wine, this platform can provide as little, or as much, information as each customer wants.”
No thanks. As far as I’m concerned, at a restaurant the caliber of Pearl that’s the job of your waiters and sommeliers. I’ll fiddle around on Wikipedia when I get home if I want to read about a history of beef carpaccio, but when I’m in your restaurant I’d prefer to speak to real people. Especially the ones I’m sharing a table with.
I know, i know. It’s just for the ordering part of the night. People stop and read their menus anyway. It allows interested diners to learn more about the food they are paying so much money to eat. Blah-di-fucking-blah.
Sorry, but it’s not like a menu at all. A fine menu is an art, it should tantalise and excite, it should intrugue. It should create a sense of anticipation and expectation. It should leave room for surprise so that the moment when the dish is presented is ever so slightly magical. And, critically, it should stimulate discussion – not kill it stone dead.
To my mind, some of the magic is lost if, by the time the dish has arrived, you have seen photos of the finished product, watched a video of it being prepared, read about the farm from where then main ingredient was sourced, and learned that carpaccio was invented in Venice in 1950. And who’s talking to anyone while they play with all that on a shiny touch screen gizmo?
Here’s an idea – take the iPad and release it for download. People who are interested can play to their hearts content before they come to dine, or use it afterwards to relieve the great meal and learn more about its origins, history and craft. But please, keep the screens off the dining table.
*you may not have heard of the iPad. The media, blogosphere, twitter, and other popular sources of news and gossip have barely bothered to even acknowledge the existence of this funny little gadget, let alone disucss it any great detail. So far as I can tell from what scant information exists, an iPad basically a sketch book with a waffle iron attached**.
**apologies to Grampa Simpson
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June 14th, 2010 @ 3:39 pm
Word!