Mr. Big Builds His Pyramid

By Rick Horowitz

Wouldn't it be nice, you're thinking, if people always said exactly what they meant? Sure -- if your idea of nice is hand-to-hand combat. "So tell me, how do you like my new tie?" "Well, since you asked..."

Didn't ask -- not really. Don't tell me.

And "How are you today?" does not mean "How are you today?" It means "Hello." That's all. Most folks have this scoped out early; they know you can't take everything literally.

But what about "All You Can Eat"?

We take you now to Rockaway Beach, Calif., just south of San Francisco, where a battle has been raging over exactly that question. On one side, the owner and the manager of the Moonraker restaurant, home of an "all-you-can-eat" buffet. And on the other side, attempting to take full advantage of that very offer, a gentleman we'll call: Mr. Big.

It was the oysters that did it, the newspapers say. Mr. Big likes his oysters so much that he kept going back to the Moonraker's oyster bar. One trip. Two trips. Three trips. Four trips. Then the manager said -- I'm paraphrasing here -- "Enough." Seventy-five oysters is plenty of oysters, the manager said. I've only had 40, tops, Mr. Big replied, and besides, doesn't "all-you-can-eat" mean "all-you-can-eat"?

"Outraged" -- that's what the story said, "Outraged" -- Mr. Big "demanded an apology. He didn't get one."

Anybody care to guess what Mr. Big did next? He did what any healthy, red-blooded American man would have done. No, he didn't spray the place with a semi-automatic; he did what every other healthy, red-blooded American man would have done: He sued.

Absolutely -- he filed a suit. (That's "filed" a suit, not "filled" a suit, although after four trips to the oyster bar, you figure he had to be busting a couple of seams, too.) After his little run-in with the manager, Mr. Big had left the Moonraker, written a complaint letter, received $40 from the Moonraker's owner to pay for two brunches.

Not good enough. Mr. Big demanded $400, for his "humiliation and embarrassment." (You also figure a guy who makes four trips to the oyster bar doesn't humiliate easily, let alone embarrass, but that's what he said.) So they went to court.

And we pause for a moment. Hasn't there always been a certain...linguistic leeway given to people in the restaurant biz? How else could they come up with such menu wonders as "Farm-raised and humanely harvested rainbow trout, flash-grilled over a bed of mesquite-accented briquettes, enfolded in a selection of choice seasonal greens and recumbent on a bed of cayenne-and-saffron rice"? Let alone my own (true) recent favorite, from a brunch menu with aspirations: "A Scramble of Eggs."

Anyway: There they were in small-clams -- sorry, small-claims -- court, and the Moonraker's manager was arguing that even in an all-you-can-eat place, "common decency and etiquette" still count for something. "The man had piled up the oysters on his plate, like a pyramid," the manager told the judge. Another customer was complaining that the oysters were gone.

"All I did," the manager said, "was politely and respectfully ask him to limit his intake to one dozen of each kind of shellfish. That's quite enough food for anyone."

Mr. Big didn't see it that way, of course. It was a "matter of principle," he told the judge. "Your honor, this was a crummy thing to do to me. This was wrong. I was discriminated against, and my rights were violated."

The judge took the case under advisement -- long enough to contemplate a career change, no doubt -- and then he handed down his ruling: Mr. Big wins $100.

I don't buy it. From here, it looks less like "principle" than it does "appetite" -- for oysters, for a fight. Mr. Big doesn't see it that way, I'm sure. Said he: "I feel I'm standing up for a lot of people when I say, `All-you-can-eat means all-you-can-eat.'"

After all those oysters, it's a wonder he can stand up for anything.

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