The Take In restaurant in Helsinki, Finland, is currently in the news for its ingenious service. Instead of cooking the meals in its own kitchen — which doesn’t exist — it allows patrons to order various dishes from a selection of 20 other restaurants in the city.

Sponsored by American Express and Wolt, a popular food delivery app, Take In is a pop-up restaurant that opened at the beginning of November 2016, and will run through April 2, this year.

As you’ve probably already guessed, the name Take In is a clever play on words, meaning take-out eaten in a restaurant. It sounds like a dumb concept. After all, the whole point of ordering take-out is to avoid going to a restaurant, and if you’re going to dress up to go out, you might as well go straight to your favorite restaurant instead of ordering food from somewhere else.

But here’s the idea behind it — when you go out with a group of friends and you can’t decide where to go for dinner, because everyone wants to order something else, Take In is the perfect solution. You can have a pizza, while your buddies enjoy Japanese, Chinese or even a gourmet burger.

“We want to be a living room in the city,” a Wolt spokesperson told Monocle magazine. “We all know what it’s like — you’re about to go out for dinner with a big group of friends, one of you wants to go for pizza, one of you wants to go and try that fantastic new fine dining restaurant. One of you just wants sushi. One of you is only having salad because he’s gone carb-free for February. What are you going to do? Well, the answer in Helsinki right now is you come to Take In because you can do all of those things in the same place.”

Patrons are more than welcome to stick to the selection of drinks available at the bar, but if they want to try the “take in” experience, all they have to do is use the Wolt app, just as they would from the comfort of their own homes. They have access to the full menus of around 20 local restaurants, and once they order and pay for their meals, all they have to do is wait for someone to deliver it to the pop-up restaurant.

芬兰赫尔辛基的“内送”餐厅因其新奇的服务上了新闻。这家餐厅的饭菜不是在自家厨房里烹饪出来的 — 事实上这家餐厅根本没有厨房 — 而是让顾客从该市其他20家餐厅点菜然后送过来。

这家快闪餐厅由美国运通和热门送餐应用Wolt出资运营，2016年11月初开张，一直开到今年4月2日。

你很可能已经猜到了，“内送”这个餐厅名字是一个文字游戏，就是在餐厅里吃的外卖。叫外卖就是为了不用去餐厅，但是如果你真要打扮整齐去餐厅吃饭，还不如直接去自己最喜欢的餐厅，而不是从其他餐厅订餐，所以这个“内送”餐厅似乎是个笨笨的想法。但是如果你和一帮朋友出去又犹豫不决去哪个餐厅好，因为大家的意见都不统一，那么“内送”餐厅就是最佳选择。你可以吃披萨，你的伙伴们则可以吃日本料理、中餐或者美味汉堡。

“我们就是要做城市中的客厅，”Wolt的发言人告诉《Monocle》杂志说，“我们都经历过这种情况 — 你准备和一大帮朋友去吃饭，一个人想吃披萨，一个人想尝试一下那家不错的新餐厅，一个人就想吃寿司，还有一个人只想吃沙拉，因为整个二月份都不打算吃碳水化合物。这时你怎么办？目前在赫尔辛基唯一的答案就是去‘内送’餐厅，因为你在同一家餐厅可以吃到所有这些东西。”

顾客们完全可以只在“内送”餐厅的吧台喝饮料，但如果想尝试一下“内

送”服务，他们只需通过Wolt应用点餐，就像在家里点餐一样舒适方便。他们的点餐范围包括20家本地餐厅所有菜单上的食物，一旦下单付款，他们只需等人把饭菜送到快闪餐厅来即可。

(Chinadaily.com.cn)

    Words to Learn 相关词汇

   【有创意的】yǒu chuàngyì de ingenious exhibiting originality or inventiveness

    【顾客】gùkè patron a person who is a customer, client, or paying guest, especially a regular one, of a store, hotel, or the like