The other afternoon, I was trying to take a nap.<\/p>\n
I had worked late the night before, and dinner was still several hours away<\/a>, and I had achieved that particular state of adult exhaustion in which closing your eyes for 20 minutes begins to seem less like a luxury than a medically indicated procedure. Unfortunately, the universe had other plans.<\/p>\n First came the whippet who lives down the hall<\/a>, galloping outside my apartment and then, as he often does, failing to account for the slickness of the linoleum. There was a skid, followed by the unmistakable sound of dog meeting trash cans: bowling ball, pins. Then two neighbors began, ironically, shouting outside my window about which of them was less considerate about the amount of noise they made. Then I remembered that the ceiling fan has one speed at which it rattles faintly but insistently, so I got out of bed, yanked the chain and sent the blades spinning faster.<\/p>\n Finally, I lay back down. The apartment quieted. My breathing slowed. I had just begun to lilt toward sleep when my phone buzzed.<\/p>\n \u201cWe miss you! You deserve something sweet\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n It was an ice cream chain<\/a> in a city where I no longer live.<\/p>\n There is something uniquely irritating about being emotionally pursued by a corporation that has also failed to notice you moved away. I lay flat on my back and began rage-unsubscribing from every company that had recently texted me in the voice of a human being. We miss you. STOP. Treat yourself. STOP. Your favorites are waiting. STOP. I continued until my phone was quiet and, eventually, so was my brain.<\/p>\n A few days later, rifling through my wallet, I passed a small red-and-gold card decorated with lucky cats and a rising sun. Across the top, in chunky yellow letters, it reads \u201cPhodega.\u201d On the back are ten little boxes. Collect ten stamps, get a free entree<\/a>.<\/p>\n I have three.<\/p>\n Phodega<\/a> is an Asian-American noodle and snack shop in Chicago\u2019s West Town, a few blocks from a house where my partner and I stay when we\u2019re house-sitting for family \u2014 a little borrowed-neighborhood life we slip into for a couple of weeks at a time, usually twice a year. Inside, a neon sign reading SEND NOODS hangs above a pyramid of Caf\u00e9 Bustelo<\/a> cans. Over the counter, another sign cheekily warns: \u201cDon\u2019t Try It. You Won\u2019t Like It.\u201d The menu includes salt-and-pepper chicken skins with sweet-and-sour sauce and something called the Viet Dip, a sandwich served with a little cup of pho jus.<\/p>\n The punch card is almost comically unsophisticated. It cannot send a push notification. It does not know where I live, what time I usually eat lunch<\/a> or whether I have recently been searching for sandwiches<\/a>. If I neglect it for six months, it will not announce that it misses me.<\/p>\n And yet it works.<\/p>\n Want more great food writing and recipes? Sign up for Salon\u2019s free food newsletter<\/a>, The Bite.<\/p>\n Every so often, while looking for a credit or business card, I flip past it and think about Phodega Fries \u2014 ribeye, cilantro, onion, jalape\u00f1os and gravy piled over seasoned fries<\/a> \u2014 and decide that perhaps it is time to acquire punch number four.<\/p>\n During those house-sitting stretches in the neighborhood, I started feeling, embarrassingly quickly, like something of a local. The third time I walked into Phodega in about two weeks, the woman behind the counter looked up, smiled broadly and asked whether I wanted what I\u2019d gotten last time (the Viet Dip) or wanted to try something new.<\/p>\n Something new, I decided. I ordered the Hainan-style chicken rice.<\/p>\n This is, of course, exactly the sort of interaction that restaurant apps are forever attempting to imitate. They remember what we ordered. They remind us of our favorites. They greet us by name. They offer suggestions based on what we liked last time. But there was a crucial difference in that question from behind the counter: The same thing, or something new?<\/p>\n She remembered me without assuming that remembering me meant she knew what I wanted.<\/p>\n \u201cWe know your favorites\u201d<\/p>\n I like being known in restaurants. I like going to the coffee shop<\/a> where the barista remembers that I take my mint tea iced and unsweetened, and I remember that she has a puppet showcase coming up. I like the brunch place where a waiter knows I want blackberry jam with my Texas toast<\/a>, and I know what his nieces have been reading lately. This kind of familiarity is one of the pleasures of becoming a regular somewhere: over time, without really deciding to, two people accumulate small pieces of information about each other.<\/p>\n The information goes both ways.<\/p>\n This, increasingly, is what feels strange about the language of food apps. They borrow the vocabulary of that relationship \u2014 we remember you; we know your favorites; we missed you \u2014 while removing the reciprocal part entirely. They may know precisely what I ordered at 9:43 p.m. on a Wednesday six months ago, but there is nobody on the other side for me to know in return.<\/p>\n And increasingly, there is an app for almost every place we eat. The fast-food standards<\/a> have them, of course, but so do regional chains and neighborhood coffee shops: download this, order ahead, skip the line, collect points, save your usual. The bargain is convenience, and often it genuinely is convenient. But increasingly, buying a sandwich or a cup of coffee also means initiating an ongoing relationship \u2014 one in which the restaurant gets a permanent little doorway into your attention long after the transaction is over.<\/p>\n And lately, simply remembering what we bought is beginning to look almost quaint. The next frontier is not merely knowing what we have wanted before.<\/p>\n It is trying to decide what we are going to want next.<\/p>\n A few weeks ago, I opened GoPuff, a grocery delivery app, and noticed a button I hadn\u2019t seen before: a black square with a blue-and-white \u201cgo\u201d glowing in the center. I tapped it.<\/p>\n CURATED FOR YOU.<\/p>\n \u201cPulled your late-night comfort picks,\u201d it explained, \u201cthe usual craving fix when you order after dark.\u201d<\/p>\n The screen looked almost like a cheerful kitchen-table flat-lay: products arranged over a wood-grain background, hovering around a GoPuff bag as though someone had just come home and emptied the evening\u2019s provisions onto the table. Some were plausible: grape Uncrustables, chocolate-covered raspberries. Then came paper towels, Method cleaner, dish soap, lime sparkling water and grapefruit-scented antibacterial wipes. Apparently my 2 a.m. self is part snack-seeking raccoon, part conscientious housekeeper.<\/p>\n Only then did I realize this wasn\u2019t simply a recommendation screen. GoPuff had already put every item in my cart.<\/p>\n The price wasn\u2019t displayed there. I had to navigate into the cart to discover the total: $50.30.<\/p>\n There was an \u201cundo auto-add\u201d option, but it appeared in smaller, considerably less enthusiastic type. The phrase itself got me. Auto-add. The assumption was built into the feature: We have already begun shopping for you. Correct us if necessary.<\/p>\n