Death by a Thousand Paper Cuts

I had lunch at Red Robin today. I like Red Robin because the hamburgers are perfectly decadent, not preciously so. Red Robin dispenses with the gourmand pretense about locally sourced beef that was raised on a diet of special grass and coddled in the embrace of organic feel-goodery. Nor does Red Robin care about truffle oil, cheese aged in some creepy man’s suitcase, or aioli anything. Regrettably, the burgers do come with mayonnaise, however Red Robin is unembarrassed; it doesn’t insist on a shroud of novelty language. You will get fat at Red Robin, and they don’t mind telling you. Mayonnaise. There—the menu says it. Thankfully, they will refrain from putting it on your hamburger if you ask. Ditto on the tomatoes.

What Red Robin does serve, other than mayonnaise, is a wonderful, delicious, unhealthy hamburger. I like the one with barbecue sauce, a starkly visible layer of blue cheese, and fried onions. These are not carmelized onions, pan-seared onions, Vidalia onions, or seasoned onions in panko breadcrumbs. These are “onion straws,” and the picture on the menu—did I not mention the picture-book menu?—makes it clear that you’re getting a healthy serving of fried underneath your unpretentious beef, your sheet of blue cheese, your shredded lettuce, and your tangy barbecue sauce. If you’re going to have to eat a vegetable, Red Robin makes sure it’s more treat than medicine.

Red Robin also serves all hamburgers with a side order of unlimited French fries. Let me put that another way: from the moment you sit down until the moment you leave—and for me, several hours usually elapse between those two events—you can eat as many French fries as you want. They never run out, they never cost more, and they never elicit consternation. No one judges you for it. To the contrary, you’re encouraged: every table in a Red Robin has dry-rub seasoning which you can sprinkle on the French fries. Now, the condiment furniture which you inherit will tell you a lot about a restaurant. Some places furnish only salt and pepper. Presumably, the idea is that you won’t need to dress your food once it arrives, save for the unavoidable variations in personal tastes which basic seasonings purport to satisfy. Maybe you can receive mustard upon request. Elsewhere, you might sit down to a basket that includes not just the basics, but also, seemingly always, ketchup, mustard, malt vinegar, hot sauce, and steak sauce if you’re lucky. This suggests that the restaurant will surrender control over the entire endeavor and let you take over once the raw materials have been served. This is an inquiry which we’ll have to exhaust some other time, but you get the point.

Anyway, Red Robin is designed for French fries, and the table lets you know as soon as you sit down. You won’t receive water unless you ask for it, but the architecture of the experience contemplates that you will want extra sodium for the endless torrent of fried potatoes that streams forth from the kitchen. Needless to say, I love Red Robin.



I love it so much that I was willing to drive twenty-five minutes in both directions for it today. People who grew up in or around St. Louis are probably nodding that you can, indeed, get almost anywhere in the greater metropolitan region within twenty-five minutes. And you can. It’s great. But that’s all they’re thinking. Presumably, they are now ready to read more about what I had for lunch. However, those of you who are like me and grew up elsewhere but came to St. Louis later in life likely have gasped, or at least clenched your teeth. These people, my people, are completely disinterested in lunch and surely want to know just one thing: how did I possibly survive?

Really, that’s the only pertinent thought. Driving in St. Louis today was perhaps the single most dangerous roadway exercise in America. St. Louis is a city of awful drivers. When you move here, after people stop asking where you went to high school, they wink and tell you that stop signs are usually optional. They don’t mind that at night, or in the rain, and especially at night and in the rain, you really can’t see very well. Lines dissolve away from your view corridor. It’s quaint!

There is a vast array of this arresting nonchalance regarding safety on the road. People in St. Louis appear to either not know or not care about the traffic regulations. St. Louis drivers can’t use yield signs, treating them like stop signs or green lights, but rarely undertaking the simple calculation which they suggest. St. Louis drivers also can’t use speed limits, usually traveling inexplicably below them or alarmingly above them. Heaven forbid that you are in a rush and hoping to make a right turn on red: the car ahead of you in the right lane with its indicator blinking may or may not understand the rules. Worry, too, if you want to get on or get off the highway. The confluence of merging traffic, deceleration, acceleration, reading signs, and looking ahead to the ramp engenders what I can only surmise is panicked irrationality. On my way on and off the highway, I have had to avoid collisions, vehicles stopped for no reason, vehicles driving in two lanes for the better part of a mile, and almost anything else which you might imagine could take place at a highway’s access point.

Every day is an adventure on the roads, and today was no different. It was especially harrowing, in fact, because not only has St. Louis never learned to drive, but it also has yet to accept its unchanging geography. St. Louis is a Midwest city. It is only about four hours east of America’s dead center. Year in and year out, winter brings freezing temperatures to this portion of the world. Perhaps you’ve followed the news sometime in the last century and divined this trend. Those of you who took chemistry in high school know that freezing temperatures cause precipitation to transform from rain to snow and ice. This is all lost on St. Louis, as a staff, record label, and as a motherfucking crew collectively.

People from St. Louis respond to snow the same way I’ve always imagined people in Miami might. Defying decades of empirical evidence and the good sense to change its ways, St. Louis is not equipped to handle winter. When more than a half inch of snow begins to accumulate, people in this city act as though the four horsemen have appeared on the horizon: food is hoarded, local news broadcasts take on the tone of embedded war coverage, and everything stops. Last week was especially galling. On Monday afternoon, schools and businesses closed early, air horns echoed in the distance, and ominous warnings replaced any kind of rational conversation. Want to know why? It was cloudy outside, intermittent drizzle was falling, and the news said St. Louis might get some ice and snow overnight, maybe up to six inches. Call in the National Guard! (Sadly, that’s not a joke; it actually happened.)



Driving conditions are the greatest casualty amid the endless, snow-driven hysteria. Roads are hardly plowed, and St. Louis drivers treat the white of winter as a canvas across which they can author a lawless masterpiece. Stop at the lights, don’t stop; drive in multiple lanes; park perpendicular to the curb—snow makes the St. Louis driver think he can do anything. This city is probably only a one-day accumulation of ten inches away from all-out rioting. And because St. Louis is afflicted by an odd combination of winter denial and inadequate municipal services, snow lingers and keeps the crazy going. Five days into the latest pennyante Armageddon, cars remain snowed in, ice and packed snow persist as accepted surface conditions, parking on the street continues to test towing services, and St. Louis stays driving like a dickhead. In this way, alone, was last week’s storm perfect.

All of that stood between me and Red Robin as I got in my car today. My concerns were warranted. On my way to retrieving a friend, a woman in the car in front of me decided that a green, left-turn arrow with all other traffic stopped was insufficient license to make the turn. So she waited out the entire light cycle before mercifully seizing upon her legal right when it next arose three minutes later. Then, on a side street, I had to use my horn and several hand gestures judiciously to encourage a man to close his parked car’s door and remove his luggage from the ice sheet on which it was resting in the middle of the road. Later, merging onto the highway, I had to contend with a car in the rightmost lane that, for no discernable reason, had stopped moving. We also encountered a man who was so intent on turning into my lane when he shouldn't have that he made the unilateral decision that a collision was better than waiting. Luckily, I disagreed. Worst of all, none of this was surprising. If I am ever institutionalized, the primary catalyst for my insanity will be having driven here.

It didn’t really get better, either. To find this Red Robin is to engage in a process that is one part treasure hunting, one part daredevilry. The local Red Robin rests atop a hill in the western suburbs. Less restaurant than heart of a citadel, this Red Robin appears to be the centerpiece of an unintended mixed-use development that counts an industrial warehouse, a hotel (I think), a small corporate office park, and some condos among its outer fortification. Together, these buildings obscure any view of Red Robin from the road, and the labyrinthine network of driveways impedes access even once you’ve found your way inside. Oh, and of course, the actual entrance to the entire complex is a sharp, obscured ninety-degree turn from the leftmost lane of a four-lane road with a 45-miles-per-hour speed limit. Combining such a terrible layout with St. Louis drivers is almost a perverse joke, and I think I broke my neck swerving in even though the car didn’t roll over.

Luckily, the French fries came early and often once I sat down.