So I woke up this morning, did some exercise on our elliptical, took a shower, etc., you know, my normal Sunday morning routine…of course, I knew it was Father’s Day, so I made sure to shave and get dressed nicely for a brunch I was expecting to go to…hung out for a bit, grandparents arrived, everyone said hello, and we got in our cars to leave…
…and then a black van showed up. Don’t worry; it wasn’t one of those FBI/NSA/government black vans, but instead a private, chauffered van ride that the restaurant we’re going to provides for its patrons. My mom organized this whole thing without any of us knowing–and that was only the beginning of this tremendously fantastic experience!
After our comfortable ride over to the restaurant (which is in Mizner Park in Boca, more specifically part of the old Cartoon Museum) (the name of it is “Zen 451″), we were let out by the front doors and welcomed in by the maître d’, who apologized for the (slightly late) van pick-up (slightly late?! Who the hell cares!? It was a private van ride to a restaraunt! Holy crap I would’ve never expected that anywhere in my life except maybe in LA) and proceeded to sit us at surely what had to have been the NICEST table in the entire restaurant–a private room, all by itself, in the center, with a gorgeous view of the rest of the place and encased by glass and very tall wine cabinets. The table–black obsedian marble–was built into the wall with a fireplace and set with AMAZING places. The knives at each setting had these really cool handles that were rotated 90 degrees so as to allow the knife surface itself to be perpendicular to the table–very neat.
So our waiter (server? host? He was pretty cool.) comes in and explains to us how the whole “dining experience” (yeah, this wasn’t even a meal, but a dining experience! Awesome!) works. First, he gives us all water and takes our orders for drinks, then says that, at our leisure, with no rush, we can go to their central “harvest bar” (a buffet style area) to pick out cheeses, small salads, deserts, fruits, and assorted other light starter items. Then, when we’re all out of the room getting our first courses, he and other servers will come in, whisk away our other, unused items, and place down fresh-baked buttermilk biscuits with “tangerine” butter, some type of awesome bacon, and other delectables. I barely knew they had done so; very clean, professional, and elegant. I got some quite delicious food and chowed down.
Then our host (yeah, I like host. I think it fits his role in our dining “experience”) explained that now, we each get to pick a stone from two small metal dishes in the middle of the table, and that those stones represent our dining wishes or something like that–if they’re to the left of our setting, we will be served; if we place them back, we’ll be left alone to digest and relax. When being served, hoardes (and I mean LOTS) of chefs come by like clockwork, every five minutes or so (sometimes even lining up outside the door!) with fresh meats and other dishes that they cut for us right at our table and serve to us individually. AMAZING raspberry-glazed ham, pork, rump roast, sausages, and more paraded our way for a long time while we gorged ourselves on fabulous food.
Finally, we all placed our dining stones back and our host came back one last time to offer coffee and desert (desert, again, being at the harvest bar). I went up and got a few pieces to snack on while everyone else got some coffee and paid the bills. We left and walked around Mizner for a bit before the van came back–at our call, no less–to bring us back home again.
All in all, a very, very good and surprising dining experience indeed! Mad props to my mom for being able to organize this whole thing! Dunno what we paid for this whole thing but it must’ve been through the roof (my delicious lemonade itself was $16 for 4 glasses, but it WAS oh-so-good), but, hey, who cares, it was different, out-of-this-world, and really special.
If anyone’s interested, a few pictures are on my Facebook over at http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=116288&id=632011773.
I enjoyed my good friend Joel from high school coming to visit me so I could show him around UCF and what college is like; I also enjoyed heading up to Jacksonville with him to take off a weekend and relax and tour UNF. It’s an interesting campus–very reminiscent of UM to me, although with apparently much cleaner bathrooms according to someone I know. Then we watched RHPS tonight–I learned some more callbacks–and we’ll head back to campus tomorrow to drop me off and he’ll head back to South Florida. Tomorrow (Sunday, the last day of the weekend) I’m really looking forward to: laundry, fencing, and Dexter with friends and hopefully someone else. Here’s to this weekend! It’s been awesome so far and I hope the awesomeness continues into the week! I’m certainly happy! 
This is my election night heist, BTW–made away with about 20 bags of Doritos-brand election chips, as well as a hat and a small button in the center:
