A lesson learned: while dining at Parthenon, one of the cavernous eateries in Detroit’s Greektown, I broke the “Blink” rule.
You know the “Blink” rule, don’t you? According to Malcom Gladwell’s _Blink_, we make decisions more rapidly than we can consciously follow. The decision is made in a “blink” — and we spend the next several minutes either justifying what we’ve already decided that we want … or second guessing ourselves.
In restaurants, that plays out this way: the diner who orders the first thing that catches his eye tends to report being more satisfied with his dinner than the diner who agonizes over the choices on the menu.
So at Parthenon, what I really wanted — what caught my eye — were the gyro platters. The thick pita bread … the glistening curls of roasted meat … the pile of crispy-fried potatoes … beautiful. But then, I sat down at the table, plowed through the menu, and began waffling. Should I get the stuffed grape leaves? The chicken stir fry? No, no … the pastitsio!
The pastitsio is a sort of Greek lasagna, with layers of macaroni melded with cheese and ground beef. The description swayed me from my first choice … and it was a mistake.
The pastitsio was tasty enough — if a bit pale and spiceless — but huge. I mean, this pastitsio was the size of a football. Five people could have shared it. And just a quarter of the way into it, I was weary of tasting the same thing bite after bite after bite after bite. Eating it — and not eating most of it — was just exhausting.
Next time, it’s the gyro platter — or whatever catches my eye first.
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