Zenith

The good news is we managed to make more Seitan Fajitas for Sunday brunch.

The bad news is I did not manage to grill another small agricultural district worth of vegetables for the Veggie Melt because, after making the extra Fajitas, I was so tired my eyes fell out of their sockets and had to be retrieved from somewhere near the dish area.

So a decision had to be made.

I figured I was statistically less likely to be assaulted for not having Veggie Melts than I would be for running out of Fajitas.

The Veggie Melt faction is generally much more docile.

They can usually be distracted with Banana Pancakes and, if necessary, a reassuring nod from across the buffet.

The Fajita people are another matter entirely.

In this business you have to make these kinds of strategic decisions if you intend to survive.

Still, in the interest of caution, I will be wearing protective gear throughout brunch day and avoiding any sudden movements near the peanut noodles.

On an unrelated but equally poorly managed front, I did manage to get all of the Halloween decorations down from storage.

At the rate we are going, I figure we should have the place completely decorated just in time to take everything back down for Christmas.

Another flawless week of operational excellence here at Zenith Labs.

I have no idea what the folks at Zenith Labs were thinking when they put together this week’s menu.

This one is work.

I was here until 10 o’clock last night grilling vegetables for the Veggie Melt.

Then we had to make salsa.

Then make the seitan, slice it into strips for the Fajitas, make the Fiesta Corn—which, despite the name, is not particularly festive—and then make the sauce for the Linguine.

This is a very good menu.

It is also an unnecessarily laborious menu.

Which, now that I think about it, makes it a pretty accurate representation of The Zenith.

Also, if you happened to see that earlier post about the article written about us, you may notice that three of the dishes mentioned in the article just happen to be on this week’s menu.

Pure coincidence.

Which does make me wonder what strange rift in the cosmos causes things like that to happen.

We have well over 200 dishes that we make on a revolving basis, a tradition we started years ago to keep things fresh and interesting for our customers back when there were only one or two vegetarian restaurants in the city.

Of course, that is no longer the case.

There are lots of vegetarian and vegan options now.

So naturally, rather than simplifying anything, Zenith Labs has decided to continue doing things the difficult way anyway.

Yes folks, it’s true.

Just another example of The Zenith’s lackluster business planning in action:

Doing things that are no longer particularly necessary, take twice as much work, and make absolutely no economic sense…

all in a continuing effort to keep our customers happy in an unnecessarily complicated way.

Which, come to think of it, may actually be our business model.

Well this was a rather nice surprise.

Apparently The Zenith has been declared “too weird for words.”

After 25 years of collecting, cooking, hanging things from ceilings, filling rooms with objects nobody else quite knew what to do with, and generally refusing to behave like a normal restaurant… I suppose we’ll take that as a compliment.

Thank you to Family Destinations Guide for this wonderfully kind piece about our little corner of Pittsburgh.

They even called Sunday brunch “almost mythical,” which may be the nicest way anyone has ever described pancakes and organized chaos.

If you’d like to read the whole article, the link is in our bio.

There is a tightly knit choreography required for three people to do the work of five or six—depending, of course, on how well the previous day’s dance went.

The situation is always fluid.

Unknown factors can and do occur with alarming regularity.

The toilet explodes.

A cooler breaks down.

My memory breaks down and I forget an essential ingredient.

Flash flooding.

An old friend walks through the door and suddenly that important list of things you were supposed to be doing disappears into a sort of collective denial.

The list is endless.

Today, however, the interruptions were considerably more entertaining.

First I got a message from Nephele, a great local progressive-rock band that filmed a music video here at The Zenith a while back, letting me know the video was finished.

So naturally I had to stop everything and show it to everyone.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgLCzS2tUDw

I should probably confess that I am a hopeless prog-rock nerd.

Neil Peart from Rush even ate here once while passing through Pittsburgh on one of his motorcycle tours.

I was so completely star-struck I could barely say a word.

Anyone who knows me understands just how medically improbable that is.

Anyway, small disruption in the choreography.

Then the phone rang.

Some film students wanted to know if they could come in and shoot something here for a 24-hour film festival.

Naturally we said yes.

So suddenly there were cameras, filmmakers, restaurant people, antiques, brunch preparations, and whatever other pieces of organized chaos happened to be occupying the building at the time.

They were a great group of guys, and I cannot wait to see what they made.

Needless to say, by this point the carefully choreographed dance had become considerably more interpretive.

But somehow, despite all of it, three people still managed to produce Sunday brunch.

The brunch is ready.

The music video is excellent.

A movie was made.

Everyone survived.

We did not, however, fix the toilet.

There is a certain kind of magic that comes from 25-plus years of dishing out good karma with your meals.

People do things—often very unexpected things—and believe me, after that many years of working with the public, I have seen a lot.

There are the people who buy something, refuse to pay me the price I quoted, and insist on giving me more.

There is the fellow who brought me a toaster after reading this past week’s menu post.

Another person brought me a brand-new frying pan after I posted a picture of one of the cooks throwing our old one into the garbage with a very disgruntled glower.

But today was especially pleasant.

An old friend stopped by and brought me a bunch of glassware for the restaurant—and despite having worked here as a dishwasher in a previous life, somehow still considers us friends, which honestly says more about his character than ours.

Then another friend stopped by and gave me a new power supply for a light project I have been working on.

And just when I thought the day was winding down, another person came by and left us a bunch of really cool things for the store from his parents’ house.

There are days when running a business feels like one long exercise in paperwork, broken equipment, questionable decisions, and trying to figure out why the toaster is suddenly part of the public infrastructure.

And then there are days like today.

Days when all that kindness you have tried to put out into the world seems to quietly wander back through the front door carrying glassware, frying pans, power supplies, and boxes of somebody else’s history.

I suppose after 25-plus years, The Zenith has accumulated a little karma of its own.

And apparently some of it comes with appliances.

So instead of my usual absurdly clever, incredibly funny, jam-packed-with-ironic-wit-and-sarcasm Sunday brunch post, I am left with only one thing to do…

just say thank you.

Due to our faulty toaster continually tripping the breaker, the folks at Zenith Labs have submitted a proposal to the local electric company to dam the Monongahela River in order to generate enough electricity to keep the toaster running smoothly and prevent any disruption in the flow of toast to our customers.

The electric company responded that building an entirely new generating facility simply to operate one defective toaster would be prohibitively expensive.

To which I replied:

The people need more toast.

Therefore, it seems only reasonable that the cost of the new power infrastructure be distributed among the population at large so everyone can share in maintaining an uninterrupted supply of toast.

And I am quite certain that if people did not actually need more toast, the brilliant minds at Zenith Labs could invent several exciting new things requiring toasting, thereby creating enough additional demand to justify the new power plant.

(wink wink, nudge nudge)

At this point the electric company asked:

“Why don’t you just buy a newer, more efficient toaster?”

Well, obviously because I would have to pay for that toaster myself.

Why would I do something ridiculous like that when I could simply keep the old inefficient toaster, increase its electrical requirements, and spread the cost among everyone who supposedly demands more toast?

Honestly, sometimes I wonder how these people stay in business.

Anyway, following our usual questionable business model, after all this talk of toast we somehow neglected to put anything toasted on this week’s menu.

Naturally.

We do, however, have Smoky Potato Soup, which is at least vaguely toast-adjacent.

Although in this case the “smoky” part may simply refer to the smoke coming out of my ears every time I think about all of these new data centers popping up across the country and the amount of power they are going to require.

So come have some soup while Zenith Labs continues working on our proposal to dam the Monongahela in the name of toast security.

I can’t help myself. Every Saturday night I feel a creeping sense of existential dread because The Zenith is still mourning the loss of our dishwasher.

Okay, maybe it is not The Zenith itself.

That would be ridiculous.

As if The Zenith were alive or something.

Heh heh…

Okay, maybe it is alive.

(help me!)

Anyway, for the life of me, I simply cannot understand why we can never keep a dishwasher for any length of time.

I mean, aside from the fact that it is my personal definition of hell, the pay is marginal, the working conditions are questionable, and the coworkers are all certifiable…

It is a great job!

It is my firm belief that if you can work at The Zenith for more than a year, you can pretty much do anything.

In fact, if you ever see The Zenith listed on a résumé, there should be no need to review any of the other applicants whatsoever.

The last person to survive more than a few months as our dishwasher is now enjoying the good life as a high-rise antenna technician in Fort Myers, Florida.

Which, frankly, sounds safer.

Anyway, in celebration of the new roof not leaking and the Great Storm Drain Revolt of last week finally ending, we decided to make the great breakfast duo of Banana Pancakes and Strawberry French Toast with strawberry topping.

Which happens to be my favorite combination…

provided I do not burn them while dashing back to the sink to wash dishes between pancake flips.

Firstly, I would like to thank everyone for all of the well wishes and kind messages we received regarding our sudden closure due to the Great Reverse Drainage Flooding Debacle during Thursday’s bizarre, (which, of course, had absolutely nothing to do with climate change) colossal downpour.

I was honestly taken aback by the response.

So much so that I began to notice our usual weekly menu post paled rather dramatically in comparison, which made me wonder whether all of you were simply much more excited to see The Zenith close than you were to know what we were serving before we had to close.

Naturally, this has caused me to question our entire business model.

Somehow, off in the distance, I can hear Dale Carnegie laughing hysterically from his grave.

Anyway, everything is now (mostly) dry, and because of the circumstances we happen to have an unusually large amount of food for this week’s brunch.

So please come on down, assuming you are not too busy doing whatever it is people are apparently supposed to do on Labor Day.

I never quite figured that out.

I have always worked on Labor Day.

And generally, I do not participate in holidays that do not involve some sort of fictitious character or mascot.

Now, if Labor Day had Charlie the Woodchuck, who magically ran around chopping everyone’s firewood on Labor Day Eve and stacked it into perfect cords on every porch by Labor Day morning…

That I could get into.

Due to what could only be described as a freakish amount of rainfall that apparently selected the Zenith as its personal drainage experiment yesterday evening, 4 out of our 5 main drains backed up into the building.

The flooding itself was mercifully brief.

The mess it left behind was not.

So, unfortunately, we will be CLOSED TODAY while we continue cleaning, drying, scrubbing, moving things around, questioning our life choices, and attempting to return the Zenith to its customary role as a restaurant, gallery, antique store, vintage shop, and general repository of things nobody else was sensible enough to save.

Naturally, none of this had anything whatsoever to do with rising global temperatures, increasingly intense localized rainfall, changing weather patterns, or any other suspicious climate-related nonsense.

No, no.

This was obviously just the same perfectly ordinary seasonal weather we have all enjoyed since childhood.

Nothing to see here.

Although at one point yesterday evening, standing in the back dining room watching water come up through four drains at once, I did briefly regret not adding a small rowboat to the Zenith inventory.

Closed today.

Apparently we are now waterfront property.

These are strange times indeed.

With the first day of fall only a few weeks away, it is rather odd to be walking down the street trampling on fallen leaves while simultaneously sweating profusely in what feels like 100-degree temperatures.

The leaves are turning. The sun is setting earlier. Autumn is clearly attempting to arrive.

The weather, however, appears to have rejected the premise.

Speaking of strange things… did I just see a coin minted with a living person on it, or did I miss something?

Oh.

I guess that was just wishful thinking.

Anyway, the menu appears to be suffering from the same seasonal confusion. We have two winter favorites and two summer favorites because, much like the weather, we had absolutely no idea what we were supposed to be doing.

Fortunately, confusion remains one of the primary ingredients here at Zenith Labs, and everything is still delicious.

And yes, we just made the Seitan Hot Sausages this week, so you can order some to go when you and the kids head out in search of pumpkins and various fall decorations for your cornucopias.

Just remember to wear sunscreen, keep hydrated, and try not to get heat stroke while selecting your decorative gourds.

Happy almost-fall.

Apparently.