Let’s Play Restaurant
I was home alone on Saturday. Mr. T went off to work, so after a magical sunny farmers market visit I dived into my sunlit kitchen, turned on the radio, heated the oven and started baking. I first looked at the clock consciously at 10pm. I wanted to finish a couple more stuff, so I baked on, decorated, organized, cleaned and prepared for the next day enthusiastically. When I next looked at the clock it was 2.30am and even though I wasn’t feeling tired at all, I reluctantly went to bed so I get a little sleep. I was up and ready by 7 to make the doughnuts and the flourless chocolate cake before guests arrive.
I took a bath, washed my hair, put on my nice dress and in the meantime Mr. T put on his apron, set the tables, decorated and gave me both his hands to help. We were everywhere and did everything like Shiva, and my cousin (the pancake pro) arrived too to complete our Cake Bar team for the day.
We played restaurant as participants of the Restaurant Day. It was our second time. After the November debut we learnt a lot, and this time we were even more systematically prepared for our one-day restaurant. Although the final menu only crystallized by the night before we even had printed menus for the guests. To our greatest surprise guests doubled despite the fact that the number of Budapest restaurants multiplied by 5.
My baking OCD got me into heaven on Saturday, but this was beaten big time on Sunday when we saw the smiles on faces of friends, family and new acquaintances after munching on one, two…or even more cakes.
I have always known Budapest is cool and that a cool place is inhabited by cool people. We already got a sense of this in November after the exciting spontaneous talks we had, but when guests of the Cake Bar stayed for one or two hours, tried cakes, drank hot cocoa or massala chai and chatted with us and with each other, seemed to be having a good time, we instantly imagined what it could be like in real life.
The company was so colorful that it is almost impossible to list everyone but everyone left a nice comment, a cute smile or playful notes. There were girlfriends trying out several other one-day places, grandma sent by daughter to fetch some doughnuts, kids in masks coming with mom; young architect from the neighborhood; parents with kids whom with we played hide-and-seek in the one room studio; the family dropped by and we had awesome supporting friends and enthusiastic cookie-loving strangers that left as friends. What surprised us, that even the tv, the radio and a daily newspaper showed up for some questions.
After the 6.30 News congratulating texts and messages were thrown at me and my colleagues were patting my back in the morning saying how we did a good job the previous day. In fact, all this media coverage is about Restaurant Day, the program that boosts the social interaction in the city, creates a new vibe and new friendships through a game that colors the everyday four times a year. We had fun, playing is not out of fashion and new dreams might actually come alive…
Sweet dreams may come.... 