Short Story About Restaurants Running Out of Food
A few years ago, I thought of a premise for a Twilight Zone-ish short story. I was at a restaurant with a bunch of people and everyone made their order, and I thought, look how arrogant we are, thinking we can order food and it will actually exist and come to us. What if our plans were to go totally awry?
This inspired a short story about a group of people who go to a restaurant and make a large order. An hour later, the waiter comes back to nervously inform the table that they are out of every single item that was ordered. The table is outraged, quite reasonably, since if they were out of these things, they should have been informed upfront. The waiter is very apologetic and takes their new orders.
The waiter comes back an hour later with a single plate of unappetizing scraps: bread crumbs, gristle, pork fat, a monkfish head and vegetable ends, all clearly dug from the trash. The waiter sings a joyful ditty, hoping to pacify these unhappy customers as he delivers this junk heap that has nothing to do with what anyone requested.
When the table loudly complains, the waiter apologizes and assures everyone that they will not have to pay for any of this, but that regretfully, these garbage-salvaged scraps are all the restaurant has available at this time.
These customers have had enough. They get up and leave, not even offering a tip to their kind server.
The customers, back out in the world, are extremely hungry at this point, so they go to the first reasonable-looking restaurant they can find. This restaurant, like the last, has the veneer of a respectable establishment with an appetizing and diverse menu, and their new waiter takes their order without signifying that anything is wrong. Finally, they’re going to get their just desserts (proceeded by a just main course, of course).
Alarmingly, an hour later, the waiter comes back with a plate of scraps even more scant than what the last restaurant offered. Shocked but still infuriated, the customers leave again.
Now totally desperate, they go to the very first food-offering-establishment they see and order the most obvious, non-complicated items off their menu. The waiter comes back a few minutes later to apologize and explain that unfortunately, they do not have those items, nor do they have any items whatsoever. The now very unsettled customers demand an explanation for this apparent food shortage, but the waiter is evasive, insisting that there is no emergency, and they should try back tomorrow.
The connoisseurs, knowing something is wrong, walk along the street, looking for signs of strife or food shortage, but see nothing obvious. They walk into another restaurant that is supposed to be open for another couple of hours, and are waved away at once.
They return to the streets, where the restaurants and grocery stores are all shuttering their doors and windows. A bit uneasy, but with a touch of naive hope, the friends agree to re-convene for dinner the next night.
4 years ago