I'm reading "Elon Musk's Utterly Mundane Vision of Dining/The Tesla Diner looks a lot like what we already have, just weirder and worse," by Ellen Cushing in The Atlantic (gift link).
Yeah, why not kick Elon Musk around over basically nothing? Nearly all of the food bought in restaurants in America is utterly mundane, isn't it? But somehow this utter mundaneness is "weirder and worse." But what's this about the music? What exactly would this "dad rock" be? Bruce Springsteen? I ask Spotify and it spits out a playlist of 125 songs and #1 is "Born to Run"... oops, I mean "Born in the U.S.A." "Born to Run" is #111.
A sample of the food: "The chili was oversalted and oddly smooth, with a slab of nonmelting cheese sitting on top of it like a pillbox hat.... The french fries had a disconcerting astringency, like they’d been dusted in the same stuff that’s put on Hint of Lime Tostitos. All together, the food, like its surroundings, is simultaneously over- and underconsidered, high form and low function. It isn’t bad so much as odd."
Anyway, did you see Elon Musk reuniting with Trump at the Charlie Kirk memorial? Did you wonder what they said? A lip-reader at TikTok has Trump doing all the talking: "How are you doing? So Elon, I've heard you wanted to chat. Let's try and work out how to get back on track. I've missed you." Lots of nodding from Musk.
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55 comments:
The fussy, bitchy Atlantic.
Go, wussies, go!
It's a diner, for gad's sake. Don't the over-credentialed, perpetually pre-teen mean girls at The Atlantic ever grow up?
This is ground thats already been bombed to oblivion- way to be current Atlantic…but yah the diner is weird- a sketchy neighborhood in a sketchy city, oddly placed next to apartment buildings and warehouses. The huge video screens keep the neighbors up while the parking means you have to watch from weird angles. At the openings the tesla robots what are supposed to change the world had a tough time serving the stale popcorn. I know they want to shit on Musk to feel better about themselves- this is a good way to do it…
The left hates. It is what they do.
I hate when my fries have a disconcerting astringency. Is there anything worse in life?
Being a female writer for modern mainstream American media that hates everything must be exhausting. No wonder most of them are barren.
Sounds like a typical restaurant review to me. Using big words and a snarky tone to distract from the relative unimportance of the topic.
The Atlantic has a finely tuned instinct for the capillary.
Meow Ellen, meow.
Looks like an airport lounge.
TSLA poised to break $440 at opening. It was at $230 in April when Kak told us it was junk.
The food looks like Shake Shack's food.
The diner looks like something out of EPCOT. The menu says, "ingredients sourced within range of a fully charged Tesla". The ingredients come from local family-owned farms and small producers instead of large corporate farms. All organic.
You can charge your electric vehicle while you eat. It should be everything the Left loves and would have been a few years ago. Now it must be hated because of Trump.
RideSpaceMountain said...
Being a female writer for modern mainstream American media that hates everything must be exhausting. No wonder most of them are barren.
It is one of the many "jobs" that were created for women.
Millions of jobs that serve no real purpose and actually do damage to society. But it lets women "make money" while they sit in air conditioning.
This is the knock on source of inflation by the way. This woman sits in an air conditioned building, "produces" whatever you want to call this article, and gets paid to do it. No actual goods or services of value were produced but she gets a bunch of money to buy things we actually need to live. And the money that pays her comes from government debt. But digressions aside...
These articles are a net negative in just a pure sense before you even get to the reduced birth rate.
Screw the Atlantic and their Musky obsession. Who is the chef and what was his/her vision for this food? I know how these restaurant articles are supposed to go! Sounds like the reviewer was just a bit too unsophisticated for what their plebian tastebuds encountered. Send a real man or woman in.
I didn't read the pissing and moaning article by the liberal arts major who believes irony is the Pinnacle of intelligence. There's plenty of YouTube reviews that take you throughout the location and environs and give a detailed and honest review of the food which is good not great but the prices are reasonable.
It reminds me of a combination of the old Disneyland attraction The Carousel of Progress and the Jetsons. I tell people that growing up in Los Angeles in the 60s and 70s was like living in the future. It filled us kids with a sense of wonder and ambition especially centered around technical things.
I think it's fantastic that Tesla wants to revive that spirit.
@Achilles:
Dear diary,
Today I hated that new place Elon Musk created. I hated the music. I hated the food. I hated the design and I hated the patrons. And then I told everyone how much I hated it.
I couldn't be happier! Another great day!
Leland, I'm glad you noticed that Kak is perhaps the finest unintentional investment advisor on the planet. Do the exact opposite of what he is saying and you'll be celebrating as part of the 1%.
"At" Disney California Adventure, the Downtown Disney part outside the park, there was a superb fine dining restaurant, The Napa Rose, nestled behind the Grand Californian Hotel and the chef Duane something (oh my memory) was so good. He always greeted us with an amuse bouche that was truly an exceptional one-bite adventure. Back when it was family friendly my wife always had the annual pass to the Parks so she could take the grandkids whenever and we dined at the Rose frequently. Mmmm.
So yes, even in the tourist zones, even in the most overdeveloped parts of SoCal, even at an "Epcot-like" spot one can find fine dining.
Tesla supercharging stations coming into service all along NYS Thruway. People need a rest stop at the station.
“The ingredients come from local family-owned farms and small producers instead of large corporate farms. All organic.”
I read articles that were out a few months ago that listed the sources of the food on the menu, and they are all top shelf, from the protein to the ice cream.
Justabill said...
Sounds like a typical restaurant review to me. Using big words and a snarky tone to distract from the relative unimportance of the topic.
9/23/25, 8:02 AM
... Bleepy-bloopy? A Michelin review this ain't.
The Atlantic (D) - LOL
Howard: "... growing up in Los Angeles in the 60s and 70s was like living in the future."
You said it, brother. The original Disneyland was truly "the happiest place on Earth". Affordable too. And for that matter, so was L.A. Sunshine. Beaches. Hot cars. Hot girls. And not a stinkin' leftist in sight. It was as close to heaven as any place could ever be.
The Musk/Trump feud was theater. No more scratched Teslas.
Democrats are that gullible and they knew it.
RideSpaceMountain said...
@Achilles:
Dear diary,
Today I hated that new place Elon Musk created. I hated the music. I hated the food. I hated the design and I hated the patrons. And then I told everyone how much I hated it.
I couldn't be happier! Another great day!
And I get paid six figures to write these articles!
p.s. The Air conditioner isn't working today I am going to work from home. Please get one of those fat ugly men who wears a red hat to fix the air conditioning please.
The Atlantic. Man I can’t wait to try it now, because I have t believed anything printed in the Atlantic for decades.
I used to eat out once a year on my birthday but a bad neighborhood sprung up around the Bob Evans and it was too much trouble. Waitresses were called waitresses back then.
"How long have you been a server, Honey?" was a futuristic mocking joke.
Life in SoCal in the 60s and 70s:
L.A. was okay, but the O.C. was the place to be.
“Nearly all of the food bought in restaurants in America is utterly mundane, isn't it?”
After Pankot Palace, almost everything will seem mundane. I bet Willie Scott would agree.
May I assume Ellen Cushing is from the “proletariat should be eating bugs” school of thought?
“There's plenty of YouTube reviews that take you throughout the location and environs and give a detailed and honest review of the food which is good not great but the prices are reasonable.”
Spot on. Why waste a penny on some democrat version of “how to be miserable”.
The collective left exist not to create - but to destroy & tear down, and then they whine.
The left destroy every mind they rot and everything they touch.
then they whine.
Dude1394 said...
Spot on. Why waste a penny on some democrat version of “how to be miserable”.
Tribal signaling is a basic and primitive form of communication.
Elon is brave for opening anything in the hell hole that is LA.
A step forward for Connecticut?
There’s a move afoot to criminalize marriages between first cousins. Gotta be what produced Sen. Chris “Liver Lips”Murphy (D-Dense)…
A pre-disposed review of pre-digested thinking. If one is reading reviews for food joints, then one goes to the hoi polloi, not the snooty 'experts'. When you are checking out movies, which reviews do you give credence to on Rotten Tomatoes, the 95% 'Fresh' from the 'professional' critics on the major studio release of re-imagined tripe, or the 5% 'Rotten' from the real people who hated it?
Weirder, same but worse, odd...
Why do magazines bother employing writers anymore? AI could produce far better dreck than this.
It is supposed to be a diner people can stop at to grab a bite to eat while they charge their Tesla car. The experience is supposed to be non-extraordinary perhaps even a little mundane. Though the "Wagyu" options for any kind of ground meat product are a bit eye-rolling and seemingly just an effort to upcharge.
"When I visited one evening last month, an employee was stationed at the top of the stairs with a request: Those interested in returning to Earth should please take the elevator down. The staircase is too narrow to accommodate two-way traffic; people were bumping into one another. The beautiful staircase could do a lot, but it could not, as it turned out, perform its basic intended function, which is to give people a safe and simple way to move between floors using their feet."
This sounds like a design flaw and possibly a fire hazard.
1. It's a "diner" not high cuisine.
2. Food quality follows from the (contractor?) that supplies the food and preps it. They drive around every city before dawn and unload Costo-sized cases of food. Line cooks are line cooks, and have similar skills in opening plastic bags and microwaving them.
Musk should be congratulated for having achieved such a delicately calibrated degree of estrangement from Trump. The Trump voters are not inspired to boycott his cars (although I don't suppose they were ever a big part of his customers) and the left wing activists no longer feel it necessary to scratch and torch his cars......The restaurant critics are still out to get him, but such losses are manageable. Sadly, the assassins probably still consider him a more attractive target than most trans professors, but that was always part of the game, even before Trump. With the exceptions of Warren Buffet and Michael Jordan, billionaires are on the hit list.
@William:
I'm inclined to accept that the Musk-Trump fight as DOGE flamed out was calculated precisely for that purpose. Musk accepted being the scapegoat to help Trump, and his tantrum gave Tesla breathing room on the left. Musk has dropped off the social media radar after DOGE found so little money to recover (and after Musk revealed his gross ignorance).
why not kick Elon Musk around over basically nothing?
It's OK, she writes for The Atlantic. If a tree falls in a forest, and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?
Elon Musk's Utterly Mundane Vision of Dining
"It is mundane. It's great. I know."
There was 0.0% chance this writer was going to file a positive review of the place. She knew it, her editor knew it, the readers knew it, her server knew it, the 'Merican people knew it.
It's oddly reassuring. No surprises.
Funny that many Tesla owners seem to fear violence from the left to the point that they have to put protective bumper stickers on their cars, sort of like lambs blood, I guess, hoping that their Tesla will be passed over in the vengeance of angry liberals.
even at an "Epcot-like" spot one can find fine dining.
I wasn't disparaging it by saying it looked like something from EPCOT. Some of the best WDW restaurants are there, although I meant the look of the diner would fit into the Future World part of EPCOT.
Food quality follows from the (contractor?) that supplies the food and preps it.
See what I wrote in an earlier comment. The food is sourced from local smaller vendors, not Sysco or the like.
What's wrong with smooth chilli?
https://skylinechili.com/
I was trying to associate my comments with yours Mary Beth yet somehow they sound dissociative. Hmm. Now that I'm a Floridian I'm planning on finally seeing Epcot etc. (I did visit Disneyworld on a trip years ago but that excluded Epcot.)
Howard at 8:13 nailed the old CA well. We grew up in paradise and the progressives took it to hell. As they do.
Did "Ellen" say whether she charged her Prius while waiting or not?
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/orxhEgUKs1U
The prompt that wrote the story: "Musk -- bad. Whadda ya got?"
So Ellen, what's wrong with canned chili? It's often "oddly smooth".
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