A Heat Wave Is Not The Time To Eat On the Patio. Stop it!

The weather across most of our country has been hot enough to not just fry an egg, but to fry a thick-cut pork chop. Seattle and Portland are expected to break heat records this week and the northeast isn’t much better. While most people are clamoring for coolness, there are a few sadists who will still want to go to a restaurant and sit outside on the patio. These are the same people who enter the restaurant from the heat and then promptly ask the hostess if it’s hot on the patio. The answer is yes. Yes, it is hot on the freakin’ patio and here are four reasons to NOT sit out there.

Some of your food will suck. Your fresh, crisp kale Caesar salad will be so limp and wilted that not even a dose of Viagra is going to help it. The kitchen wouldn’t make that salad and place it under a heat lamp, but that’s what sitting outside is like. If you like your salad to look like a withered pile of dead leaves, by all means, enjoy! But don’t expect your server to do anything about it when you complain that the salad doesn’t seem fresh. Nothing is fresh when it’s 104 degrees outside. From armpits to salads, it’s all un-fresh.

Cold drinks will not stay cold. The delicious frozen margarita that looked so frothy and icy when it first arrived to your table will shortly be a glass of runny sour mix and tequila. A tall glass of iced tea will turn into a tall glass of tepid brown water and the glass itself will sweat with condensation. It will produce a puddle of water on the table that will slowly slide over to your cell phone and ruin it permanently. For the sake of your iPhone, please don’t eat outside!

It’s not good for your server. Your waiter or waitress doesn’t have the luxury of sitting in front of a fan or in the shade of an umbrella. They are running back and forth between a 68 degree restaurant and a patio that’s hotter than any sauna. The constant to and fro from one environment to another varying in temperature by 30+ degrees can put actual harm on a body. Your desire to “soak in a little vitamin D” can potentially make your server sick. Is your hamburger al fresco really worth killing a waitress over??

Your face will literally melt off. Remember that scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark when the Ark of the Covenant is opened and it melts the face of a Nazi? Well, it’s so hot this summer that you don’t need to open an ark or be a bad guy to feel like your skin is falling off of your skull. All you have to do is sit outside for dinner. It’s not worth it. Besides, nothing ruins a meal more than having your face drip into your bowl of pasta carbonara. And if it’s not your epidermis that’s dripping into your food, then it’s your sweat. And if it’s not your sweat dripping into your food, then it’s your server’s sweat.

They say it’s not the heat, it’s the humidity, but with temperatures soaring into the 100’s, it doesn’t really matter. Dry heat or otherwise, a heatwave is not the time to sit on the restaurant patio. Sit inside in the nice cool air conditioning like a normal person. Only monsters want to eat outside in this weather dodging solar flares and inviting heat rash and heat stroke. Save the patio for a day when it doesn’t feel like you’re eating in hell.