Where is everybody?

Remember that time I thought the humans were dead? I was right! Here I am at China Red, THE VERY RESTAURANT THAT INSPIRED THAT POST, on Friday night. I was meant to meet 12 friends at 8 o'clock.



When I say 'here I am' obviously I am not in the photo cause someone had to take the photo, right? So I took it . I took that photo at 8:08! But where was everybody? You guys I think the humans are dead!

Obviously I can't really pursue this line forever, because of course everyone showed up and we had a delightful dinner. But something weird was happening on Friday night. I drove to the city that night, for a number of reasons (wanting to get home to Baby quickly, needing an external factor to make me minimise my alcohol in take, you can dig it). Anyway I was pretty conflicted about which way to go and where to park. I thought I would never get a park on St Kilda Rd because Melbourne Festival is on and I figured all those middle aged theatre-loving drivers would be in all the car parks. But there were so many parking spaces! Tens of parks to chose from. I got a totally A1 park! "That's weird," I thought to myself, "where is everyone? Why can I get such a good park." Then I started thinking about reapplying lipstick and never thought about why there were so many car spaces free again.

Until later when I was heading home after a lovely dinner and the best cocktail bubblecups I have ever had. I mean the only cocktail bubblecups I have ever had. (Toff were serving cocktail bubblecups and I have not stopped thinking about those delicious little bastards since!) Anyway it was this beautiful warm evening, the first of the season really, but at 11:30 on Friday night in the city the streets were practically empty.


I don't know what the eff was going on, but all together it kind of felt like the humans were dead.

That's all I'm saying.

Imperial dinners

I started writing this post in my best Bret Easton Ellis impersonation, because last night I felt like I was in a BEE novel but I felt the tone was necessarily kind of bitchy and I actually had a great night so I decided that I'll just talk about it in my own voice.

LB and I decided to go to Cookie for dinner but it was so packed we moved upstairs to Toff. We easily got a little table at the back and as we were both starving and thirsty I ordered two beers and a serve of olives at the bar. I felt a bit worried that I didn't tell them accurately enough where we were sitting for the olives but figured we'd see them come past and those olives would be ours.

We just happily drank our beers and because I am now such a lightweight and those olives didn't come before I finished my drink I felt kind of drunk. A waiter came up to take our order. He was quite a cutehead and we ordered from him (appetizers of rice pancake with roast duck for LB, sweet potato and cashew dumplings from me and mains of grilled porterhouse and mushroom and spinach wonton jungle curry.)

"Do you want the appetizers to come out first?" the waiter asked.
"Sure," we replied. Then we thought it would be a good idea to ask about our olives.

LB: We also ordered some olives we haven't got yet.

Waiter: Olives?

Me: Yeah, I ordered some olives at the bar before but we haven't got them yet. I'm not sure if I gave an accurate description of where we were sitting.

Waiter: Yeah, probably sitting somewhere else would be better. If a booth comes up would you like to move there?

Me: Um... yeah, that would be great. But um... just about the olives we ordered before, I'm not sure if they are coming.

Waiter: Oh, yeah. You guys will be next in line for a booth. It shouldn't be more than a 15 minute wait.

Me: Um...ok. Great...?

I could barely wait for him to leave the table before asking LB what the fuck had just happened but he was as clueless as me and we couldn't quite figure out if we didn't get out enough and this was a normal interaction or if that was some weird shit.

A little while later this totally adorable waiter brought us our olives and asked us if we'd ordered any other food. "Oh, yeah, but it was separate to the olives so we're not in a hurry for it."


He insisted we tell him what it was, just so he could make sure it had gone through. "That's weird" we thought. Until about 15 minutes later the original waiter wandered past with some sort of meat skewer looking for the intended recipient. "Did you guys order food?" he asked us. "YES! FROM YOU! ONLY 15 MINUTES AGO!!!" I shouted in my head, while I smiled and said, "Yeah, but that's not ours."

About this time we happened to notice about 3 booths were empty but we were still sitting at our little table. Then the adorable waiter came and moved us to a booth. All our food arrived all at the same time with apologies about the delay.


But it seemed like a totally reasonable amount of time to wait for food.


The food was really yummy.

Basically, I have no idea what the hell happened last night, but I gave that adorable waiter about a 40% tip.