Ann Arbor is known for having many great restaurant options for students, whether they’re eating breakfast, lunch, dinner, or grabbing dessert or drinks. Because of this, it’s always a hassle for an indecisive person to decide which restaurant to go to because everything always sounds so tasty.Â
I’ve always been a very indecisive person when it comes to food, and walking down State Street never helps me decide where to go. I’ve been surviving fine with the fact that I’m very indecisive, but when I have my weekly lunch date with one of my best friends, it becomes a catastrophic problem.Â
She’s indecisive too.Â
We would always walk from our meeting point, which is usually in front of East Hall because our classes end nearby, down to State Street, asking each other the whole time, “What is the vibe today?” knowing very well that we have no idea what the vibe is. We never know.Â
Sometimes during very indecisive moments, we would walk all the way back to East Hall after our rounds at State Street and go down South University, asking each other once again what we were feeling for that day, but everything would still sound so good. Eventually, one of us would pressure the other to choose a place, but it would usually take us thirty minutes to reach that point.
It might seem like all hope is lost and that there is no solution, but I figured one out.Â
An amazingly easy solution, in fact.Â
Back in high school, we would have group presentations and in some classes, no one would ever willingly go first. So my teacher would open up a wheel and input each of our names, spinning the wheel to let fate decide who would go first.Â
I thought, what if fate decides what we eat?Â
I downloaded a wheel-spinning app from the app store and made two wheels, one for lunch and one for dinner. I populated each wheel with various restaurants within walking distance in Ann Arbor.Â
On my phone, I use the app Wheel+, but there are hundreds of apps on the App Store that do the same thing as Wheel+, and there are websites as well. My lunch wheel has Chipotle, The Seoul, Playa Bowls, Sweetgreen, Panera, Sweetwaters, Amer’s Deli, Lan City Noodles, Tropical Smoothie Cafe, Slurping Turtle, and Tomukun. My dinner wheel is very similar, but it contains Mani Osteria and Bar, Isalita Cantina Mexicana, and Sava’s as well, and excludes some of the restaurants in the lunch wheel that are too casual. Obviously, this is a small selection of Ann Arbor restaurants, so there are many more to choose from!
Now, when my best friend and I are indecisive about what we’re going to eat, I just spin the wheel, and fate decides.Â
Sometimes, the wheel gives us a certain restaurant and we immediately grimace, opting to spin the wheel again. It shows that we are capable of making decisions because we can decide where not to go. The wheel just helps us narrow it down faster.Â
After my friend and I implemented the wheel technique, the time we spent figuring out where to eat shrunk down significantly. If you ever have a hard time deciding where to eat in Ann Arbor, make a wheel of your favorite restaurants and give it a spin!