Tonto Gets On The Level

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Tonto Gets On The Level

Quick, call your therapist … not to schedule an emergency appointment, but to cancel the next few. Surely your overall life neuroses comes in part from dining out. You always seem to get the seat in the draft, under the poorly placed spotlight, or at the table that wobbles. Dining out is full of stress. and it’s enough to drive someone to seek professional help.

Lighting and draft issues are a plague of the human kind, but the wobbly table thing – well, that’s something easy band-aided with a few sugar packets.

But Eric Flatt, owner of Tonto Ba & Grill up in Cave Creek, was tired of seeing his customers fiddle with the wobble. “At Tonto we have Saltillo tile on our patios, which translates to ‘Nothing Level,’” he says. “The problem is that the table moves every time someone lifts their arms up. Usually, the patron fixes it with a sugar packet, but that’s just not right.”

So for a while, Flatt found a solution to the wobble in black rubber wedges called “Shuv-it’s,” but they were always getting lost, hosed off and on to the golf course, swept up, and then thrown away. Even the birds would steal ‘em. (And by birds we don’t mean customers, but yes, Flatt confirms that customers would steal them for their own wobbly tables at home … savages.)

As Flatt was having new tables made for the patio (Have you noticed all the 75-degree days lately?), he found a solution in a new table footing called the “SuperLevel”–a foot with an internal spring built into it. Although Flatt had to have all of the new tables custom made with these pieces, the problem is now solved and Tonto’s patio is one of the most neuroses-free in town.

No, tables aren’t bouncing up and down like Dre’s ’57 Bel Air, the SuperLevel Automatic Self-Adjusting Glide quietly creates a level table-top with an ingenious spring-and-ramp mechanism down below. Now, you can enjoy a view like the one you see below without having to look down, wondering which leg is craving some sugar.

And since Flatt just saved you a trip to the therapist, order a bottle of wine, enjoy the view, and set your elbows on the table. Now that’s livin’.