My Big Fat Jewish Restaurant

August 27, 2006 - 11:21 PM by

Noorster is a waitress. I’m not sure where, but it’s somewhere in Israel. One of her friends, who happens to have a blog, went to check it out. Here is the surreal report:

Yes folks, this is a restaurant with a band. Well, not quite a band. More like one guy, posing as a singer, whose level of sobriety is inversely proportionate to the lateness of the hour, and his sidekick, posing as ‘the guy who plays the keyboards’, providing the back-up for the first guy, and occasionally (though probably unintentionally) even playing chords in the same key as the first guy is singing in. They regaled us with such unforgettable numbers as ‘No Woman No Cry’ (I kid you not), ‘Sweat A La Long’ (ditto; and when he positively shouted ‘push it, push it some more’, I thought I was going to spray my drink all over the table), and others. The decibels were set at ‘ballistic’, presumably because any lower and people might be able to talk about the quality of the music and come to the conclusion that they really weren’t enjoying it. At this level of sound, all people can do is grin at each other, and wonder why everyone else is grinning when it really is so utterly painful to listen to.

During the band’s break, when the singer went to fortify himself with half a bottle of Johnny Walker Red Label, the helm was commandeered by an Elvis impersonator. Well, an Elvis impersonator by name at least. The resemblance ended there, although there were sideburns and a very silly white suit involved as well. We played the game of “guess what Elvis song this is” – If we managed to guess it before it was over, he was doing well. The worst part of the Elvis performance was the realization that he had probably rehearsed …

Noorster expertly took our orders, which was followed, a rather incredibly short time later, by her ushering in platters the size of, well, platters, absolutely heaped with food. And good food too. I guess something had to be drawing the crowd (the place was packed) and I was hoping that it wasn’t the band.

And it was then, as I sat and ate my ktitsot keves and watched the people on the dance floor moving not quite to the beat, the extended families at their long tables, and the children pouring salt and pepper into their drinks, that I realized what this restaurant reminded me of. I suddenly realized why this all felt so familiar. This place was Chez Barmitzvah! It truly felt as though we were at the barmitzvah of someone we didn’t know, whose guests we had never (thankfully) met – the sort of function you get invited to because your mother’s a friend of someone whose daughter once babysat for someone whose next door neighbor just happens to be … well, you get the picture. Having come to that realization, I think we were then able to relax and enjoy it, because we knew the genre and were able to appreciate it for what it was. This wasn’t a restaurant pretending to be a restaurant. This was a restaurant pretending to be a barmitzvah; or a wedding; or both.

Check out the hysterical postscript here.

Tags: • Category: Business, Food, Israeliness 

Comments

One Comment on My Big Fat Jewish Restaurant

  1. Nominally Challenged on Mon, Aug 28th 2006 5:09 PM

    2. I am so flattered at being linked by you that I am lost for words, so I’ll just grin :) This is the first time I’ve ever been quoted at such length :)
    THANK YOU!!! :)

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