Grill

Last month I went to a fancy Grill Buffet with my sister. It was pretty damn of an experience and also, foody as hell. I felt lucky that a slob like myself even had the privilege to enter such a fancy restaurant, let alone the fact that I bought a seven-dollar bottle of water. And, since my dad works on the same building and gave me two vouchers, I didn’t give a fuck about how much or how little I ate. More privilege.

My sister and I woke up at 11. The buffet was to start at 12. We’re not early risers. We didn’t say much while we were on the way there, and for some reasons she just had to express that fact out loud, so that even the taxi driver’s mother could hear it. Odd things. Walking into the building (a fucking beautiful one, by the way), I felt like I was in a place I wasn’t meant to be in. People didn’t just dress fine. They dressed like they make seven figures. Which also makes my life seem pathetic in comparison. Even the elevator was fancy: it has a touchscreen so that you can see which floor you’re on and which floor you wish to get onto. A couple in their sixties greeted me and asked me about the weather. I’d prefer not to talk about that.

So this is what my dad experiences every day he goes to work. Hmm. The Grill Buffet was on the 63th floor. I supposed I looked nicer than usual, as the receptionist was smiling and being all polite the whole time I was around her. She looked at my voucher and my sister’s, then proceeded point to the room that supposedly contained all the awesome food we’d been expecting.

The room was empty. There were some cooks and a fat chef, who looked disinterested in what they were doing and looked like they hadn’t sleep in years. We sat at the table for several minutes until lunch time started. My sister was on her phone the whole time and took 100 pictures of her face. It’s not like they were not good enough; she was just a perfectionist who wanted to include all kinds of variations: this nose wrinkle had gone with that dimple, how about we include all that AND an eyebrow expression? Hundred pics suddenly sounds reasonable.

Twelve o’ clock. The waiter came to our table and asked if any of us wanted a drink. I asked for orange juice. My sister wanted water, which serves as a Chekhov’s Gun in our story. People started coming in, including some fancy Korean businessmen I feared as a kid. Coming towards the fat chef, who’d made some really nice-looking grills like grilled lamps and grilled beefs and grilled turkey, I could not help but notice how cute he looked and sounded. He was begging us to try his freshly grilled beef, which I couldn’t hesitate. Sister had “some oysters” and tried to convince me to have “some oysters”. My hands were shaky but still I managed to grab some fried rice, with grilled beef and of course, sweet potatoes. Yum.

I ate the meal in a heartbeat. My sister ate hers in a couple of heartbeats and a couple of hundred of pics. We sat their for a while, took another hundred pics waiting for a check to come out. Then both of us realized that there was no check and we could eat whatever the fuck we wanted, whenever the fuck we wanted, at any priced we wanted, we stood up and ran towards the booth next to that of the fat chef’s. Well, me at least. There was a cool chocolate fall, ice cream on demand boxes and Jesus Holy Cow, sushi. We had to check twice if it cost any dime, but it didn’t. So we grabbed whatever we could. Tuna and Salmon Sushi, Gimbap, Cupcakes, Noodles. Free stuff is always good, regardless of what science tells us. My sis was thirsty so she had the waiter to keep the water coming like a boss she was. I still don’t know how the hell she pulled it off, but before we knew the waiter brought out a giant wine-looking bottle of WATER to our table. I looked up the price and it said six bucks. Why, now?

Time to use our gun. After (nearly) finishing our meal, we decided to call it a day and left. The check came out and it’s one of those vaguely bizarre moments you have once or twice in your life. 18 bucks for a bottle of water. WATER. MINERAL WATER. BY THE WAY. On one hand, 18 bucks isn’t that pricey for an awesome lunch. One the other hand, what the fuck are they thinking that they actually charge for water let alone charge that much for fucking, allow me to repeat myself, WATER?

We paid and left. On the way home I kept thinking of how delicious that tuna was before it got swallowed by my greedy mouth. And also, water. It’s become a part of my nightmare now.

 

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