Foreign Restaurant

It is not like these restaurants in America with their sterile atmospheres: slick new furniture, stylized art, ambient lights, and every angle rationalized to the judgment of specialized interests. It is a restaurant filled with details, inviting customers to take in an experience while eating and drinking, to converse casually and caress senses with a collage of décor less convenient. One side is open to the city, looking out on multi-story hotels with lush landscaping, palm frond trees and a pine tree with spreading branches and a green cloud of needles above any tourists. Short squat curved posts hold up a wide concrete rail with two bouquets of flowers on it: one has small yellow blooms while the other has white daises mixed with tiny red blooms. A Mediterranean influence can be seen in columns supporting a large opening onto the street. It is also present in a mural painted on the wall. In the mural a tall woman baring her breasts looks down on an angel reaching out to her, below them is a rural town and above them two puffy white clouds. Painted around the kitchen doorway’s edge is a grapevine. Near the doorway a statue of a nude child blows a horn. At his feet are a bouquet of daises and some yellow candles. In the center of the room is a wide wood column, on which appears a green copper statue of a woman in a long dress, holding a large round bouquet of live yellow daisies above her head. There are four groups of people in the restaurant. Two are near the wall. Two are in the center of the room. All sit at round tables draped with white linen trimmed with intricate patterns. The chairs are curved with no angles. Two small rams’ heads are carved on the top back pieces of each chair. Each table has a bouquet of red flowers and a large yellow candle. Customers drink beer from green bottles and tall clear glasses. A waiter rushes out with the empties. A man with a dark complexion, thick hair, and mustache beams with friendly eyes and expressive hands talking about things that interest common people. For him common, in his place of impractical details. For travelers far away from their bare, stripped, planned environment his speech has a life that is new, different, paced with living rather than practiced in haste.