Going through the books I brought back from Europe, I found a scrap of paper I put in one while sitting in Starbucks in Brighton, England. "Eat In, Take Out," it says.
That phrase takes me back. The take-out restaurant, the equivalent of the British take-away, is a mainstay in Atlantic Canada. It was in my childhood, at least. Little communities like the one in which I lived had one every mile or two: fish 'n chips, chips-dressing-and-gravy, wings 'n chips. It is like the comedian Mark Critch once quipped, "There are only three ways to die in Newfoundland: heart attack, stroke, chip-fat fire."
These little towns were too small for large restaurant franchises. Before there was an Arby's or a Burger King in St. John's, there was the Dew Drop Inn in Topsail. My parents got paid every second Friday, and, in those years before McDonald's came to the province, we would all have dinner at the Dew Drop Inn.
You do not find these little grease pits in Western Canada. Perhaps they had them in the 1970s, as well. But A&W and Subway are very aggressive out here, bringing fast food to every little whistle stop. I do not imagine that even today the chains have spread to what remains of Newfoundland outports.
While the phrase is the one that came to mind, I was not thinking about chippies when I scribbled "Eat In, Take Out." Rather, I was reflecting on the distinctly European custom of charging two prices: one for people who leave with their food and another, higher price, for people who want to stick around. I may be wrong, but I cannot remember seeing this elsewhere, and I really cannot understand it. You certainly see lots of little dining rooms so crowded that a policy intended to discourage lengthy visits might have some use, but I never see this where they have differential pricing. In fact, the first time I ever saw it was in a little bistro in Paris, back in the mid-1990s. The place was empty.
My companion asked me, "Should we stay or should we take our food?"
"Oh, it doesn't make any difference to me," I replied.
It was then that the proprietor's eyes flashed red. "It certainly does, monsieur! It costs more for you to stay here to eat!"
At the Starbucks in Brighton, I had to wonder what they did with the extra money from patrons who ate in. The bathrooms were overflowing; the floors were filthy. Dust and dirt blew in from the patio. The extra fifty pence I was charged to sit with my scone was certainly not used to keep the dining area clean.
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