May 31, 1995  □  Washington, D.C.

From a public library I borrow a restaurant guide. Instead of classifying restaurants by cuisine or location, it classifies them by the following categories: “Beginner”, “Intermediate”, “Advanced” and “Expert”.

The guide has another unusual feature. As you read the description of a restaurant, appropriate music plays—opera for Italian, salsa for Latin, Home on the Range for beef.

I discuss the guide with Brian. We speculate about what could possibly be meant by a “beginner” restaurant: is it for kids? or for people who don’t know a bagel from a baguette? Or maybe it’s just cheap—for beginning wage earners.

We decide to investigate one beginner restaurant, which happens to be located on the second floor of Macy’s Department Store. I ask Brian to meet me there while I gather my family. The landmark I tell him to look for is a cement zebra, permanently fixed to the middle of the floor. I tell him that it might be hard to spot, since it will be covered with clothing, some on display from the store, and some thrown across the zebra by patrons of the restaurant. But it will be there, because it is immovable.

I make it to Macy’s with my family in tow. We have a hard time getting to the second floor because of problems with the elevator. First of all, the elevator starts at the top of the building, not at the bottom—which would be nearer the second floor. Secondly, the elevator buttons are not fixed to the wall of the elevator, but are “posted” there on loose squares, sometimes one button to a square, more often several. The squares are tacked up like notices, overlapping, sometimes obscuring one another. For a while I feel certain that ‘2’ is missing, but finally I find it, near the bottom of a thick stack of numbers stuck low on the elevator wall, completely hidden by larger numbers. I press it.

I wonder how the restaurant attracts any patrons at all, because it is so hard to find. But when we arrive at the second floor—and see the clothing-draped cement zebra so we know we’re in the right place—there is Brian, lounging on a couch. He had no trouble getting there!

The restaurant is cold—two windows have been broken out. There are no tables, just couches and stuffed chairs.

A beginner restaurant must be one that hasn’t started up yet.