Sunday Morning Mystery: The Curious Case of the Familial Dystopia Cafe

For a brief time after my arrival in Portland, I relied on Google Maps' links to reviews of the restaurants in my neighborhood when I wanted to try a new-to-me joint. Then I hit a hot streak of user reviews that made the entire Sunnyside district sound like the streets were flooded with fresh vomit -- even the strongest gondolier wouldn't be able to get you from the Fred Meyer on 39th up Hawthorne to the Safeway at the top of the hill during the lunchtime rush, with all the people between the two stores barely taking a few steps from the terrible restaurant they just ate at before they threw up their entire meals -- and so I stopped reading online reviews of local restaurants.

But I kept a bookmark for this review, which contains an amusing moraine terminus of what sounds like one delightfully fucked-up family story:



Portland seems to be a city of restaurateurs whose endless supply of early joy and enthusiasm is only matched by their quick sourings on the enterprise and inexhaustible volumes of profound resentment while they wait for their leases to run out. I've encountered more than a few owners of restaurants on the skids in the past, but only in PDX have I talked with owners/managers who came off like jealous ex-girlfriends at the merest hint that I've ever eaten at another restaurant at some point in my life. I bring this up to try to ground the reviews in some context; it's no surprise that the earlier reviews present a far sunnier picture than the shit & garbage shop of more recent reviews -- and I must give this cafe its due props for having no reviews that recount a staff member or the owner intentionally trying to trip one of their customers, something I've read about at two separate [but now closed] establishments! There are some superbitchy foodies in this town, but it's fascinating to track the slow rot and collapse of these places in their online reviews.

So, the Utopia Cafe was bought at some point by a woman named Valerie; my Google Fu fails in pinpointing when the change in management occurs, but the Cafe's reviews are generally very good for several years.

[By the way, I've never eaten at this cafe and don't know anyone involved; this is pure Internet rubbernecking, my friends.]



Nothing out of the ordinary here ... at least, the first time one reads such comments about this place ... as every waiter/waitress can have a shitty day. I include this review here just because I adore the phrase "remarkably unfortunate beige sweater."



And Then, Pandora's Box was Opened, And Lo, All The Multitudes Then Assumed That The Few Positive Reviews This House of Bad Service Received Were Also Written By Its Employees. And Thus It Shall Ever Be, Forevermore.



I should have split these two up, but life's too short. The top one is edutational in the context of all the reviews beforehand that mention the length of the waiting list to eat there on the weekends.

And then, things get weird: Valerie's mother supposedly posts a vaguely creepy note to her on her birthday?! Somehow, I don't think knowing more context here would help make sense out of it, especially after reading the review below [with user comments]:




I don't know where [or even why] to start with this one, other than to point out that it was posted on the same apparent-birthday date as the mother's post the year before. I'm tempted to schedule a reminder on my calender for 03/03/11 to check the reviews again to see if Valerie's father or grant aunt or whatever posts another TMI review.

This is exactly what Tim Berners-Lee had in mind when he proposed the World Wide Web: The National Lampoon 1964 High School Yearbook as a template for a textual reality show partially buried in a few pages of restaurant user comments.