When you walk into the famous Varsity restaurant in Atlanta
you will not be welcomed with a warm greeting. When you walk through the door a
cahier will most likely yell at you from behind the register asking “what will
ya have?” before you have even had a chance to look at the menu. The odd thing
is that nobody ever gets offended. It is simply part of the experience of the
Varsity and it draws hundreds of people from all over the world every day.
When I was I kid my family was traveling through Missouri
and we stopped at a place called Lambert’s Café which bears the title “Home of
the Throwed Roll.” The roll throwing is not a special technique used by their
bakers to make extra fluffy rolls but is in fact the preferred method of roll
delivery to each guest’s table. At a normal restaurant, when you want a roll
you simply reach into the basket placed on your table but this is not a normal
restaurant. At Lambert’s getting a roll is much more interesting. Simply raise
your hand in the air and an employee standing at the front of the room will
throw it to you. It make sense then, that if you raise your hand for a roll you
better be ready to catch but for some reason that thought did not compute in my
five year old mind. I raised my hand and got distracted by something only to
feel the hot buttery sensation of a huge roll being lobbed at my face while my
family erupted in laughter. I was highly offended.
