DAN ARIELY

Updates

An irrational meal

February 22, 2009 BY danariely

February 19th was the one-year anniversary for the publication of Predictably Irrational.

To celebrate I called the chef at Rue Cler — Jason Bissey — and asked him to make an irrational dinner for us.

Here is what he came up with:
As soon as we sat at the table they gave us the check and thanked us for coming — asking us to come again soon.

Next, we each got a randomly chosen dessert accompanied by cappuccino & espresso served in wine glasses.

Jason stopped by a few minutes later, spilled some wood chips on the floor, handed me a broom & dustpan and asked me to sweep the floor (which I did, and I did a good job at it).

For the entrée: they asked who didn’t eat seafood and who didn’t eat pork and made sure to give the person who didn’t eat seafood the scallops and the person who didn’t eat pork the pork dish.

The appetizer was next.  It was delicious but a few seconds after I started eating Jason came out of the kitchen and as he walked by, he helped himself to a few of the shoestring onions from my plate and just keept on walking.

Soup and salad were next. We were given large serving spoons to eat the soup with and very, very small forks for the salad.  The server stopped by a few times to make sure that everything tasted horrible and that we were having a miserable time.

At the end, she asked who had the scallops and then said “Well you’ll be needing these” as she handed those who had the scallops an Imodium AD pill in a tiny plastic cup (an Antidiarrheal medicine).

Jason – Thanks a lot. I don’t think we will forget this meal for a long time.