A Review of Seveneves
It’s been over a year since I read Seveneves, by Neal Stephenson, but last week I finally found the perfect metaphor for it.
There’s a bar down the street from my climbing gym called Magnolia Brewing Co. My brother is usually hungry after we climb together, so we’ll sometimes stop in and eat there. It’s never packed, and usually only moments after entering the host offers us a booth or a pair of seats at one of their large communal tables. The bar has a comfortable, familiar feel, the lighting and noise level are subdued.
Their menu is short but has many great options. The fried fish sandwich is perfectly greasy and crunchy. The roast chicken, while overpriced, is succulent with a crispy skin. But the dish that I keep thinking about is the Broken Falafel Salad.
I’ve gotten this dish the last three times I went, partly for the taste and partly to satisfy my curiosity about a particular aspect of its presentation, which I will elaborate on below.
The first time I ordered it, I asked for extra chicken, not knowing that the base salad would be plenty enough. Sipping on a beer and chatting with my brother, it felt like no time before the dish arrived from the kitchen. The container in which it came was no less impressive than its contents, a large porcelain bowl requiring two hands to hold securely. Our waiter set the tray down, hefted the bowl up, and set it gently on our table.
I gaped at the feast arrayed before me. The bowl nearly overflowed with its contents; a colorful, generously portioned salad, featuring large crumbles of falafel, buttressed by globs of avocado and crisp stacks of onions. The bowl itself was coated in a rough green paste which added mouth-feel to each morsel it made contact with.
As I prepared to dig in, I noticed that the ingredients had been left unmixed. The avocado swamps, the falafel boulder field, the sliced onion forest and the shredded chicken mountain partitioned the landscape neatly, while below the surface sat the rich loam of romain lettuce and cherry tomatoes. The generous portions were such that I was unable to mix the salad; any attempt to do so would result in irrecoverable loss of food, an unacceptable casualty. After a period of contemplation and inaction, I realized I would have to eat one section at a time rather than enjoying any synergy that might have been intended between the ingredients. Surely this was an oversight on the part of the chef, I thought, as I forlornly started on the onion stack.
The second time I had this dish, I didn’t get the extra chicken, hoping that would leave enough room in the bowl for me to mix it. When it arrived, as packed to the brim as the first time, I asked my server if he could have it mixed for me. He raised his eyebrow at me and shook his head as if that were the silliest question he’d ever head. I certainly didn’t think it was a strange question; surely everybody wants their salad mixed and no one would be able to mix this one themselves. My brother pointed out that I should ask for the chef to mix the salad when ordering, next time. I consigned myself to eating it one-ingredient-at-a-time again, as I plotted my upcoming strategy.
The third, and most recent time I ordered this salad, I made sure to put in a request for the chef to mix it. The waiter explained to me that he would try, but that the chef had been known to refuse to mix the salad. This intrigued me, but I counter-proposed that he could bring me a larger bowl so I could mix it myself if that were the case. When the waiter arrived five minutes later, with a wary look on his face, I saw that he was carrying an unmixed-salad in regular sized bowl. The chef would not mix the salad, he explained, and they did not have any bowls larger than the ones already being used. Silently, I raged to myself: “How can this chef not care how their food will be eaten?!” Outwardly, though, I calmly requested a second bowl of the same size. To the great amusement of those sitting at our communal table, I enclosed the two bowls to form a globe, and shook them as hard as I could without sending gobs of lettuce flying across the room.
After finishing this latest salad, I couldn’t stop thinking about the chef who made it. They were made aware that a customer was unable to enjoy the dish they made. And yet they refused to mix it even when explicitly asked. Why? Did they think this particular presentation of the salad was perfect? Did they have in mind a particular way to eat the salad that I had yet to discover?
Seveneves is the Broken Falafel Salad. It is unbalanced, the bulk of the plot sits at the end like loamy lettuce in the bottom of the bowl, while the front half of the book is dense with technical descriptions like stacks of falafels and onions. A sidetracked thought can go on for pages without a scrap of dialogue or an inch of movement. And all of this is exactly how Neal Stephenson wants it to be. And you’ll order it again, next time you go back because it’s still damn good. But don’t you dare ask him to mix his salad.
