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Show by RICHARD BARNUMREECE Chronicle Staff "...for after all, where is the real need of big hotels and smart restaurants? They are supposed to provide luxury but in reality they provide only a cheap, shoddy imitation of it." George Orwell, "Down and Out in Paris and London." There is an archetypical restaurant pompously reigning over the east bench of the Salt Lake Valley. It is representative of the Salt Lake approach to dining: it is a fancy hot-dog stand. It has nothing in common with the first-class dining experience. It is typical of Salt Lake dining in that it practices the rites of haute cuisine on an inferior level. It does so because diners are not willing to demand a superior dining experience even though they pay the prices first-class first-class dining requires. To demand excellence appears oddly caustic to the Salt Lake diner who approaches ap-proaches dining with a sense of sacred distance usually reserved for funeral viewings. First-class dining is ambiance, excellence and attention. It is when the waiter's are professional consultants who do not expect condescension or extend it. The mark of first-class dining is when Jchew reviewV dealing with sorority girls one must be sufficiently cryptic. I felt pretty cryptic because I just had recovered my Chronicle check of $18.42, which figured out to a little over thirty cents an hour. I knew that the Queen of the Junior Prom who lived at the sorority house understood cryptic language because we had done some serious restaurant skulking before. Archetypal Al's Restaurant has the most impressive view of a supermarket of any restaurant in the Salt Lake Valley. When the waitress brings the bread to you, she says in a sort of ritualistic cadence, "We break the bread with our hands here." Religious ceremony This sounded mildly ludicrous to me. I had come to experience a first-class restaurant, not prepare a religious ceremony. But rather than be sacrilegious I broke the bread. ' The waitress said, "It just came out of the bakery." I used to work as a waiter at the Rustler Lodge in Alta so I know a little about the "it just came out of the bakery" trick. This bread had just come out of the bread warmer. It was as old as the Pleistocene era and harder than a rock. I didn't say anything but the sorority girl reminded the waitress that she had asked for her coffee to be served first. Archetypal Al's is decorated in the 19th century funeral parlor. Red drapes hang from the windows to frame the view of the supermarket-purple supermarket-purple carpet muffle the feet of the waitresses who swoosh by in purple dresses; and royal blue vinyl chairs stare at each other from across empty tables like jilted Sears specials. There is a squat man lounging in one of the round corner booths who puffs on an expensive cigar. The sorority girl said that the squat man was with a furniture dealers convention group that came down from Jerome, Idaho, but I think he was paid to be part of the decor. The Entree at Archetypal A's includes New York cut steak $725 top s,rloin $7.00; filet of tender' $5.25 (fried m butter and spice served with hot sauce). The dessert menu includes cheese cake pecan pie Mr. Bagby's "blue cheese and crackers," brandied cherries and grasshopper pie. To top off the evening the waitress brings a plate of homemade divinity which is fresh enough to have been made in the home of Martha Washington by Martha Washington, Superb dining costs no more than $20 an evening if you do not use fire water or go overboard when you order. Every great once in a while a $20 dinner can clean out your soul (it can also do an effective cleaning job on your pocketbook). If you get that every once in a while junior prom feeling of hunger I would not recommend the Archetypal Al's or his gang. I would recommend Bill and Nada's and $18 in change. the service is so excellent that you suspect classic intrigue. First-class dining is when the cream for your coffee is brought in a silver chalice and the cream has been warmed to the same temperature as the coffee. First-class dining is a linguistics major serving real butter. In short, first-class dining is a pleasant trauma which is genuine and without pretense and which costs about the same as what you pay at the typical Salt Lake restaurant. Marvelous decadence I was told that this particular restaurant, which I shall call "Archetypal Al's," was one of the "top five" of Salt Lake restaurants. It was supposed to be the apogee of epicurean excellence. It was the special place you retreated to when you felt marvelously decadent as the rich bourgeois. I was told that it was that "Once in a lifetime junior prom place" where it was worth paying $20 for a meal. It is impossible to have a junior prom re-play without a sorority girl so I called one up Friday night and said, "meet me at the Huddle in five minutes, it doesn't look good for Anton, I must speak with you immediately." I have learned that in |