Provisional Finding on Restaurant Distance Check
The address saved in your phone does not represent a location you have visited recently, a location you intend to visit, or a location that exists in its previously documented form.
Dear Patron,
This office has completed its provisional review of the restaurant distance check conducted on your behalf between March 2020 and the present. The findings are as follows.
The restaurant exists. This much remains confirmed. Its coordinates have not changed. The building is still occupied by the same establishment, operating under the same name, serving a largely similar menu with several items removed, several added, and one described only as "market price" for reasons not disclosed in the materials under review.
The distance between your current residence and the restaurant is 1.4 miles. This has also not changed.
What has changed is the definition of near.
Prior to March 2020, 1.4 miles constituted a walkable distance. You walked it on at least fourteen documented occasions. On three of those occasions you walked it in rain. On one occasion you walked it in what contemporaneous sources described as "not ideal" footwear. None of this was considered remarkable at the time.
The provisional finding of this office is that 1.4 miles now registers as a distance requiring deliberation. The deliberation involves the following considerations in approximate order: whether the occasion warrants it, whether the weather warrants it, whether the time of day warrants it, whether the availability of a table warrants it, and finally whether the availability of a table at an acceptable time warrants it given that the acceptable times have narrowed since the period under review began.
The restaurant has opened a reservation system. This is relevant because you did not previously require a reservation. You appeared. You waited, if necessary. You ate. The system now asks you to commit four to seven days in advance to a specific time on a specific evening, which requires you to know four to seven days in advance what kind of evening that evening will be. This office notes that this knowledge has not historically been available to you.
The radius is not the problem. The radius was always this radius. The problem is that the radius now requires crossing, and crossing requires a decision, and the decision requires conditions that have not reliably presented themselves since the beginning of the review period.
This provisional finding does not constitute a recommendation. It constitutes documentation.
Pursuant to ongoing review, this office will continue monitoring the situation and issue a further finding when conditions change, or when sufficient time has passed that the absence of conditions is itself a finding.
Yours administratively,