Tesla, a company known for making electric vehicles that regularly malfunction and fall apart, is apparently faring no better at operating a working restaurant.
Between its amply peeved neighbors, a woman being brained by a patio covering on its opening week, and protests against owner Elon Musk's other activities, the Tesla diner was already drawing all the wrong kind of attention — and then, it seemingly halved its menu out of nowhere.
As Eater reports, Musk's foray into food service now has a new problem: many of the Tesla Diner's mind-bogglingly expensive menu items — including the so-called "Epic Bacon," which ran $12 for four overcooked slices — are no longer being sold.
Indeed, a quick perusal of the Tesla Diner's official website now shows three sandwiches, one burger, a hot dog, and two sides — the Wagyu chili and some sad-looking fries — as its savory offerings, and either pecan or apple pie for sweet treats. Gone are the biscuits and "red gravy," whatever that was, club sandwiches, market salads, hash brown bites, cinnamon rolls, soft serve, milkshakes, and many other "American food" staples that Tesla's South Africa-born and Canada-raised owner thought people wanted to pay for.
Along with the hemming-in of its menu, the retro-futuristic-looking diner and EV charging station glowering over Santa Monica Boulevard also seems to have already broken other promises. Despite avowals of being open all day and night long, the New York Times found that only people who drive Teslas and order on their cars' computerized consoles can do so between midnight and 6 AM — and only on the diner's premises, because the remote ordering system currently isn't working.
In an interview conducted over text message, Tesla Diner chef Eric Greenspan didn't provide Eater with any reasons for the downgraded menu or apparent system glitches. Instead, he maintained that the restaurant's menu would be "forever evolving," and the reduced offerings are the result of "unprecedented demand." He added that the milkshakes would be back soon, and that he expects biscuits to return as a special "sooner rather than later" — though notably, he didn't mention anything about the red gravy.
With Tesla's stock bearing the brunt of its owner's bad business decisions and even worse politics, there was perhaps room for its eponymous diner to be a balm in a desert of crap. Instead, it's just another example of Musk's hubristic side projects — and one that doesn't even offer the Epic Bacon anymore.
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