Last Tuesday I went to The Parlor. I was back in Phoenix and wanted some pizza. I couldn’t find anyone willing to drop everything and go with me, so I went by myself. I rarely go to restaurants by myself, its somewhat uncomfortable because I feel limited in what I can stare at. I’ve been trying to fight the feeling that I always need to stare at something. Sometimes, I get pretty in my own head about what/who I’m staring at, how much eye contact to make, etc… Anyway, reading that back that sounds pretty weird, but I’m just going to leave it… this is off the cuff.

Ok so I go to the Parlor it’s ~8pm and not busy at all. I’m sitting at the bar, and I’m just staring at the guys making the pizzas. Now they seem to notice that I’m just staring and one of them looks at me and goes “Are you waiting to pick up?”… and I was like “Oh… no, I like watching.” He goes back to his thing and then after a few minutes tells me “This one is yours” and hands me the pizza directly. At this point I was a little worried that I pissed him off because I was staring or something idk.

I’ve chowed down about half the pizza and I notice the chef walking behind me. I tell him the pizza was great as always, and we ended up having a thirty-minute conversation. Turns out that was the executive chef at the parlor, Zeus Miranda-felix. He’s a super nice guy and makes some of the best pizza in the state. He’s been working since 8am chopping 50lbs of onions, preparing dough, and now its 8pm and he’s still happy to spend half an hour chatting with some random guy watching him make pizza. He’s in his late twenties and told me he’s dedicated his entire adult life to cooking… his art. He’s dedicated his entire adult life to meticulously getting the small things right every day.

When I was a kid my brother and I would go over to my Grandparents house, climb up into the orange trees, and pick bags of oranges. My mom had this little juicer and we’d run all the oranges through it until we had a good jugs worth. Just one ingredient… unfiltered orangey goodness. We’d finish playing outside and want a glass of OJ before water.

Could we have just gone to the store and bought a bunch of juice? Sure. Unfortunately, most orange juices from the store are kind of garbage. They taste like the container… there’s just something off about them. There are probably many difficulties with mass producing orange juice at scale, having it sit on a truck, on a shelf and comply to regulations that slowly erodes the flavor.

I think orange juice is a nice encapsulation of getting the small things right. If your orange juice is good, it means you took the time to get nice fresh oranges and dealt with the slight inconvenience of juicing them. It’s one ingredient, there’s no hiding behind gobs of fat and salt and your customer is probably not staring intently as you make it. It’s pretty common to find on menus. It’s also pretty easy to cut corners on.

I’m not going to right hook anybody with a shitty analogy now but the details matter and orange juice speaks volumes. The Parlor actually doesn’t have orange juice on their menu, but it’d probably be good if they did. I’d like to have an orange tree in my backyard. I wish I lived closer to The Parlor.