You know how it is: You’re making your way through life, raising children,supporting your family, and doing your best with the whole messy whatever of it all. But then, all of a sudden, it happens: One of those goddamn magicians come waltzing into your world to fuck it all up for good.
Such is the plight of the author of a post recently highlighted by the depressingly essential @redditships Twitter account, detailing the ways an almost-literal Svengali has infiltrated her life over the last four months. This Mamet-esque wizard has beguiled the woman’s husband, a chef, with promises of the riches and wonders to be found if he sinks his family’s life savings into his ultimate money-making idea. What is this sure-fire, can’t lose, “Is this your card?” innovation in slow-casual dining? A restaurant for magicians, of course.
Not just for magicians, mind you; this hypothetical destination spot would also be ideal for all of us who just like to be near magic that’s happening while we’re trying to eat some soup. (Is there a fly in it? Ho ho, just you wait.) And such is the apparent mind-dominating power of this woman’s husband’s shitty magician friend Chris that, the more we think about it, the more we can’t help but start thinking that this place actually sounds pretty cool, too? Like, who wouldn’t want a menu you could rip up and then magically put back together? Who wouldn’t want to try to eat a steak that’s had a nine of clubs jammed into it by a bored and angry teen? Who wouldn’t sacrifice their marriage and the stability of their home life in pursuit of a theme restaurant concept invented by a demon in order to trick an idiot into pissing off his wife?
(It would also, we can’t help but point out, be doing the lord’s work in keeping Mystery-style pick-up artist dudes off the streets, and in a conveniently arson-susceptible location.)
So, obviously, we spent the entirety of our afternoon after encountering this post Googling “restaurants for magicians,” because hey, what else do you do, once you’ve found your perfect purpose in life? After sifting through various sites promising to teach you how to be a “restaurant magician”—as in, someone who makes table-side coin tricks, in the same style and general utility of table-side guac—we stumbled onto this archived essay, which we’re going to include here on the grounds that you just had to know David Copperfield was going to tangentially end up in this story somewhere down the line. (FYI: It’s worth skimming past all the blatantly ridiculous food stuff in that piece in order to make your way to the big reveal at the end.)
Anyway, hail Chris!