Robo Restaurants? Wasabi with that?

I’m not opposed to an occasional gulp-and-go fast food spree. In fact, when I get finished with this post, I’m heading across the street to Big Al’s to grab lunch.

But when I go out to eat, I like to get waited on, and I don’t like to get rushed out the door while the fork – or the chopsticks – are still in my hand. For this reason, I don’t like restaurant buffets. And, while I must confess that the Automat has always held a cheesy romantic appeal for me (even though I never ate at one), I don’t like the idea of eating off a conveyor belt.

So I don’t think I’ll be running out to Wasabi in the Natick Mall anytime soon.

Boston.com had a bit on Wasabi a few weeks ago, and I’ll run their bit in full:

It takes a while to make sense of what’s going on at Wasabi. Most of the normal restaurant conventions - ordering, pricing, courses, menus - have been turned upside-down in a robotized space with no walls and no right angles. Snaking through the dining area, a divided stainless steel conveyor belt curves like a surreal bi-directional river. Along its banks, diners in plush, wedge-shaped booths are encouraged to grab brightly patterned plates of sushi that float along on the belt’s 300 elevated white discs. There’s seating for 100 here, in a perpetually balmy skylight expanse of the upscale Natick Mall. A grove of stylized faux-willow trees rustle in a ventilator breeze nearby, and Christmas shoppers stroll by with curious glances at the odd robo-restaurant, now in its fourth month of operation.

There are waiters – or, possibly, waitrons – to take your drink order. But for the sushi, you’re on the own, grabbing plates that are color-coded by price, so that you can keep track of how much the meal is costing you.  I learned about the color coding from a late summer article in the Natick Patch. For all its cool graphics, the site for Wasabi itself conveys nothing that I could find about how the meal is actually conveyed. All their FB page has to say about it is that the food is “uniquely crafted and delivered.”

“Crafted.”

The big restaurant lie used to be “home made”, which somehow snootily morphed into “house made”. From whence there was nary a pause before we got “house crafted” and “hand crafted.”

I walked by a lunch place the other day, and they had a sign for “hand-crafted soups.”

Personally, when I read “hand-crafted soup” I think of someone running it through his fingers. Yuck! Use a ladle, please.

And don’t get me started on “artisanal” which, to its credit, is a word that Wasabi doesn’t seem to be using. Yet. (Maybe they have an artisanal conveyor belt.)

“Uniquely crafted” is odd enough for me, thank you, given what it does to the imagination. There is so much that “uniquely crafted” can mean, isn’t there?

It could mean that it’s ABC. (Remember that from when you were a kid talking about ABC gum. As in Already Been Chewed.)

It could mean that the chef “crafts” only while wearing a clown nose, or an angel gown, or nothing at all.

It could mean that they use only day-old fish to capture a certain pungency for the experience.

No, “uniquely crafted” I could do with out.

The most “uniquely crafted” food I ever saw was a billion years ago, when I waitressed at the Union Oyster House.

One lunch, a waitress (completely stoned, I believe) dropped a large platter of steamed quahogs on the sawdust (and whatever else) covered floor. The clams went rolling out of their shells and, given the rubbery consistency of mega-quahogs to begin with, they really had a bounce. During that bounce, they picked up all sorts of sawdust (and whatever).

Well, that waitress wasn’t going to be waiting around for no replacement order. Do you know how long it takes to steam a quahog?

So, with the help of the rest of “the girls”, she picked them up and stuffed them back in their shelves.

Now that, I’ll give you, was “uniquely crafted.”

If I can do do without “uniquely crafted,”I can also do without “uniquely delivered.”

Bad enough when you find out that the party ahead of you got the last order of sea bass. Do I really want to be in open competition with the folks at the next table for the edamame and California roll that are about to float by? (Whispered aside to eating companion: It looks like some veggie tempura just came on the line. Now go and distract the couple in the next booth. Pretend you know him from work or something.) Chopsticks at ten paces!

It seems like Wasabi is one of those “fun concept” kind of places that folks might try once for the thrill element of hunter-gatherer, for the sheer novelty. (Think Rainforest Café: is there anyone on the face of the earth who has eaten their more than once (or, more than once per child or grandchild)?)

All I can say is, Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times, Lucy and Ethel in the chocolate factory,  have some new company.