Almost but not quite

A surprisingly funny Shouts & Murmurs takes on Masa in this week's New Yorker. It's all great, until the end: "We caught a cab and got three seats at the bar at Union Square Café" Uh, what? What made the whole thing amusing was the acknowledgment of the absurdity of fine dining in NYC in general. The piece begins, "Am I very rich? Since you ask, I will tell you. Yes, I am. I happen to be one of the more successful freelance poets in New York." The "Masa experience" as imagined by John Kenney is fabulous:

Thirty-five minutes later, we met our wait staff: nine people, including two Buddhist monks, whose job it is to supervise your meal, realign your chakras, and, if you wish, teach you to play the oboe. Introductions and small talk—as translated by Aki (which, we later learned, means “Autumn”)—lasted twenty minutes. I was then slapped again, though I’m not sure why.

A funny ending would have brought former Masa diners to, I don't know, EJ's Luncheonette, or, for a non-NYC audience, Starbucks, and not to yet another super-expensive Manhattan establishment. Sort of misses the point.