Isn't a Zebra Without Stripes Just a Horse?

I recently had a discussion, bordering on a debate with a female friend who has lived in East Meadow her entire life.

She actually resides in her childhood home here as opposed to her other gazillion siblings. She has resided in some other abodes in the vicinity and has worked umpteen (a number actually over 10, but less than 20) jobs also in East Meadow, the least of which was finding similar dwellings for those people searching for a great and prosperous community in which to pay school taxes in. Her parents were as well known and well liked members of our hamlet as Bill Joel is of his.

This particular individual has a great perspective about East Meadow as she has been there for decades when was still called the Salisbury Country Club and a part of was a White Castle Restaurant. She remembers when Richard Howard played varsity baseball at the East Meadow School he is now principal of.

Although she was an infant when 115 people decided to erect the , she later worked there as a young lady as a coat check girl. So when I have a question about our neighborhood, I generally refer to our very own “Mrs. Rogers”.

The question in contention was, ”If you have a business location that serves alcoholic beverages in abundance and food for mass consumption , Is THAT business called a Bar or a Restaurant?” She tends to believe that places like , (and all its previous incarnations), or are restaurants and that places like and are bars. And I asked where the distinction was made. Was it that a restaurant must also  occasionally serve meatloaf and lamb stew as well as burgers, wings and pizza? What is the culinary genome that separates the two? (And if you dance in a bar, does that now make it a CLUB?)

I have visited all of the fine establishments listed above and had both excellent meals and drunk my share of liquor there. And I have not found enough of aberration to tell the dolphin from the true porpoise. Which establishment sports a “X” gene and which one sports the “Y” gene?

And is it that some are just Mutant X Roadhouses that blur the scientific data? It seems that the space in all these different  places designated for the bar arena versus the area for the restaurant is about equal in comparing them. So is it the fact that some have waitstaff and opposed to those that have ‘tender-foots only?

The only conclusion after this semi-intense verbal disagreement with this knowledgeable gastronome is that the difference is “one of perceived inflections.”

If a majority of the patrons come for the culinary combinations, you are a restaurant and if a majority of the patrons come to fall off the stools, then you are a bar. It is about the same as the difference between a butterfly and a moth (bright colors vs drab, day vs night traveling, hittin’ the club antennae or not).

What’s your take on this?