sábado, 16 de mayo de 2009

TOMATO., 4th Street, Casco Viejo, Panama

Rotten Tomato

TOMATO is the latest in casual Casco Viejo eateries. Interestingly, TOMATO is a chain. I saw another one in Albrook Mall, of all places. TOMATO: Soups, sandwiches and salads, I think the sign said. The sign on the new Casco Viejo locale just says TOMATO, in large, red block-letters. The name simple, and somehow modern. Tomato, one thinks, fresh, simple, essential.

We tried the door. To our utter dismay it was locked. One of us motions to try the other door when we hear the first door unlock, we are ushered in.

There is no one else inside.

Not knowing whether to sit and order or order at the counter we awkwardly shuffled around while simultaneously trying to make sense of the massive chalkboard spanning the entire wall above the kitchen, cashier, counter area.

The chalkboard resembled something akin to what you would imagine a severely obsessive compulsive neon-chalk-obsessed child could produce after a rigorous drawing session on a triple-dose of Adderol. Visualize massive chalkboards, side-by-side, they are completely covered with words, every other word is written in a different color of neon chalk, there are little doodles and infantile pictures in between, around, and on top of the words. The words attempt to communicate menu items. Although it is technically possible to decipher these items, the task is overwhelming, causing one to feel as if they are going have a spontaneous epileptic seizure, like those infamous Japanese cartoons.

Realizing that the process of decoding and selecting an item from the menu might be difficult, we decide to sit down.

Embedded somewhere within the maddening cacophony of colors, I thought I saw “Sausage and red pepper” listed under a heading that said “Waffles”. Ok, I thought, that sounds odd, sausage and red pepper waffles? Maybe I’ll try it. After ordering that and a cappuccino I turned to my fellow diners, who had ordered a turkey sandwich with a cappuccino, and nothing, respectively.

Then we got to taking in the rest of the environment. I felt like I was in a miniature model room designed by a drunken primate with a deeply contradicting set of values.

One of the first things I noticed was the prominently featured, bright green, Ecological Oven, which actually said “Ecological Oven” in bold letters across the front, just begging for an inquiry. Also notable was that there were no tomatoes in sight, not even on the menu. You would have expected at least a bowl full of tomatoes on the counter, or next to the cash register, but no.

Instead of tomatoes, all along the front counter was a presentation of every imaginable mini-Kellogg’s breakfast cereal flavor, like the variety packs your family would take camping when you were young, when your mom would always remark at the sheer excess of packaging and sugar. To sort of balance out the mini-cereal box barricade, just behind it, along the left half of the back wall (below the chalkboard) there was an impressive collection of mini chip bags. Your typical to-go mini-mart junk food, loaded with trans-fats, MSG and genetically modified corn derivatives. I began to feel like I was in a gas station. I glanced around for a Slurpee machine, but didn't see one.

The open-face refrigerator (highly illogical and energy inefficient), located at the far right end of the room, was half full of beverages: there was a neat rows of private label TOMATO. bottled water; there was not one, but multiple varieties of Vitamin Water, in plastic bottles as well; and there was Snapple (also encased in plastic). There were also four or five utterly pathetic looking, limp Iceberg-lettuce salads, diminutive portions wadded into bulky (plastic) to-go containers.

And there was this heinous wall-paper, what looked like layers upon layers of totally random, irrelevant images. Like the chalkboard, the wallpaper was basically just a tasteless visual distraction, I would have much preferred to stare at a neutral colored wall or the original calicanto underneath.

Aside from the generic tomato symbol in TOMATO's logo, there wasn't a sign of real tomatoes anywhere, not even a bowl of tomatoes on the counter. There weren't even items containing tomatoes in the menu. If there had been, the tomatoes would have been of a shitty quality.

Just before our food came, one of our dining party (the one who didn’t order anything), asked the waiter, “What makes your oven ecological?” After babbling something brief and totally incomprehensible the poor man proceeded into a five-minute torrent of further nonsense, something about how the oven was ecological because you didn’t need to use chemical products to wash it when it got dirty. It didn’t make much sense to me, but maybe I missed something.

Even though the coffees we ordered were clearly “for here”, they were served to our table in “to-go” cups, complete with little foldout cardboard handles.

And now that I think about it, my sausage and red pepper waffles were served with a plastic fork. (Was the plate plastic too?) Said waffles were barely worth mentioning, but I can break it down real quick. First of all, they were mini-waffles. The two halves of each mini-waffle were sandwiched around a little dollop of minced red pepper and processed meat. There were three of these mini-waffle-sandwiches, crudely served with a somewhat ambiguous white sauce in a small plastic cup. I tried a little bit an it was pretty bad, my best bet is that it consisted of salted margarine and aerosol cheese, 50/50, whipped together and microwaved, eaten warm.

Let me just throw this prediction out there: TOMATO will not last long in its new Casco Viejo locale, unless it is a) loosing money constantly, or b) a money-laundering front, or c) both.

The advice I would give to the people behind TOMATO? (That is, if they are actually trying to create a successful business). 1) Do away with the ridiculous neon nonsense covering your chalkboard. Erase it. 2) Neatly write the menu with a white piece of chalk. Use consistent lettering, as level as manageable. Get some alphabet stencils if need be. 3) Forget the multi-colored scrawl. Keep it simple. 4) Do something about all of the packaged food in your store, i.e. get rid of it. It is simply un-cool to sell so much godforsaken plastic packaging these days. And to display it so overtly is simply retarded. 5) Put a piece of duct-tape over the place on your big toaster oven that says, “Ecological oven”. For any remotely cognizant person that is interpreted to read, “We are full of shit.”

The most interesting thing we saw or experienced during this whole extravaganza was the following sentence written in noticeable, bold letters across a section of the chalk-board: “Tendre que salir a buscar paz en otro sitio.” For those of you who don’t speak Spanish, this means, “I will have to leave and look for peace in another place.” Well yes, yes indeed. Fantastic advice. And with that we left, whether we would find peace, we did not know.