You stand before a shop somehow bland in its eccentricities. It is generic. Plastic, safe, manufactured, and yet the windows and exterior convey an almost-Arabian Nights atmosphere. The corporate clipart conception of a distant and thrice-removed idea.
The same is true for the interior. The tapestries on the wall are merely posters thereof. The box-store chairs adorned with harem pillows. There are no hookahs here, but their beverage containers would like you to know that there are family friendly ways to repurpose shapely glass!
(Actually, to call the scene harem-esque would be generous, but let's not dwell too deeply on the details).
The room pulses and radiates with an odd kind of exotic familiarity. Or more accurately, familiarity masquerading as something exotic.
At first blush, you recognize what it is trying to evoke - Yet, it feels flat. Off. The dull gloss of processed unreality everywhere around you.
As you spy the menu, it hits you: This is the collective "focus group" concept of a mythos. Something distant and different, now only an echo, regurgitated into inoffensive corporate paste.
There is no spice here. There is instead the suburban delusion of what spice must really be.
There is also a vixen behind the counter. Despite being directly before your eyes, you can tell she is hiding well.
She's wearing what amounts to a uniform: A sterile and restrained interpretation of almost-but-not-quite-harem garb. You can tell the outfit is confining, and unconfortable. It clearly is designed to keep any and all curves, lurid suggestions, or giddy thrills hidden behind a thick layer of manufactured (but themed!) decency. They also have a hat!
As you approach, the vixen regards you with weary eyes. The kind of dead-eyed tired that speaks to a numbness of the soul (Ah, retail).
In her gaze you feel the weight of her words, and she speaks with a smooth, automatic cadence that betrays repetition:
"Hello and welcome to Genie Panini, where your delish is our command. May I please take your order?"


