Dining Secrets

What do I know?  There are many different eating establishments which specialize in differing ethic cuisines.  This (light hearted) blog entry celebrates those establishments which go so far as to make you think they might be a little more authentic than they really are.  I find this particular situation most often in Mexican restaurants.  I'm no stranger to being guided to my seat by a nice person sporting a false Spanish accent.  Sometimes I can flush them out of their protective verbal cover with a well timed question, and other times I can't.

What happened now? Salvatore's Cafe was conveniently located within our own hotel, which furnished us with a coupon to pique our curiosity.  We scanned the menu from our room and decided to give the place a try.  We were greeted upon entry by a friendly young man who seemed at first to have a slight Italian accent.  He seated us, took our orders, and served our food.  All the while, I thought something strange was going on.  What really sent me spinning was when our server (Carlos) said Vodka-Tonic like he learned to say it from Spanish-speaking folk.  While we were eating our food (which was quite good, by the way) we overheard a loud latin-based conversation coming from the bar.  I asked Allison if she thought it sounded more like Spanish or Italian.  She had taken some Spanish in college not too long ago, so I'm happy to trust her judgment.  She laughed after giving a listen, and admitted that it was indeed Spanish.

This changed the course of the entire meal.  Every word mentioned by the staff brought a secret smirk to my face.  The best part about this was that every time we contemplated where we might eat our next meal, I had to try not to dwell upon the next contestant in everyone's favorite food gameshow: Who's Food Is It, Anyway?  Afterward I remembered an old idea I had for my brother to start a food review site consisting only of Bacon Cheeseburgers.  A possible companion restaurant expose could involve judging authentic staff accents.

A Good Memorial Day to you and yours!!

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Advertising or Having Public Relations?

What do I know?  Opinion polls matter.  People with lots of money are desperate to find out what they can do (or not do in many cases) to make your life better (or less obviously bad), so that they can be better positioned to get their name in the history books.  When something bad happens to them or theirs, they are going to go to just as much effort to minimize the public backlash by carefully wielding their influence to recast the event in better light.

What happened now?  Maybe that's not the right question.  What could make it worse?  This is an expanding field, crossing the fields of marketing & sales, publishing, psychology, chemistry, politics, and is invading every aspect of our lives.  Many folks have been able to selectively block out these intrusions into their lives, while others are always waiting for the latest instructions from the subversive secret cabal.  This was demonstrated to me by my children's ability to pick up on advertising jingles and commercials.  One of their favorites songs of late is from truth.org's "Magical Amount" commercial.  They were instantly hooked by the animated characters and the word "magic" mentioned in the lyrics.  They wanted to watch it over and over again, so we had a nice little talk about what it really meant.

There's a lot more to talk about here, but I'm having a hard time not getting spun up thinking about it.  Just keep a watchful eye and you'll see more opportunistic product placement and hear more carefully worded quotes than you would have ever thought possible.

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