WHERE NOTHING IS EVER NAMED:
A sip of lukewarm water when you think you are hungry when you’re really thirsty.
9 Likes
YANCY AT THE END OF THE WORLD:
Your friend takes you to a hole-in-the-wall restaurant in their hometown that is clearly very important to them. The staff greet your friend like the prodigal son, and instead of bringing you menus tell you the chef will prepare something special just for you and your friend.
The dish arrives, and it is somehow both unfamiliar and extremely familiar. Another noodle dish, salty and sweet, with some novel bits sprinkled on top, but in the end very much like any other noodle dish, and you’ve had quite a few noodle dishes in the last week or so, and honestly you just wanted a well-cooked steak, but that wasn’t an option here, because your friend pretended to give you a choice, but this decent noodle dish, when you didn’t want noodles tonight, thank you, was going to be the end result no matter what.
6 Likes
FIRST CONTACT:
A large plate of burnt noodles, with some sauce/oil that didn’t quite translate into the local palate.
4 Likes
HEBE:
A greek salad, inexplicably bulked up with the blandest, most watery, “forget-they’re-even-there” cucumbers, which were hothouse grown, machine picked at the peak of durability and transportability, and chopped into cubes at a very efficient factory. There are chunks of feta scattered through the salad, which promise a bit of the good old salty and tangy taste inherent in the traditional salad, but they don’t appear to be completely tested for edibility - some are hard to the point of teeth-grinding, some have bits of unground black pepper buried within, some are just stale. It would be nice to say that the dressing binds the salad together and elevates it, but it is merely serviceable.
5 Likes
AWAKENED DEEPLY:
You are invited over to your boyfriend’s apartment for the evening - he is going to cook for you, a little dinner date. You haven’t been dating long, you’re both pretty young, a year or two into college, and this is a first for both of you - a first time cooking for other people for your boyfriend, a first time that you’re being cooked for by someone other than your parents, or like the school cafeteria or whatever. There’s a bit of a charming naivety to it, like you’re both play-acting at being adults - but also it’s not playing, it’s real life and it’s really happening.
Your boyfriend answers the door, and he’s a bit sweaty, shirt untucked, flour covering the “kiss the cook” apron he apparently bought special for this evening. “Oh, wow, okay, hey!” he says, in greeting. “Sorry, it’s just that. wow, okay, alright! You look great! I just have to - there’s a few things going on, can you - Um, I mean, come in!”
“Is there anything I can help with?” you ask, entering the apartment. The lights are “dimmed” by throwing some fabric over them, and there are some posters up of Star Trek around the small table in the common area. “What’s with the posters?”
“No! No, I got it - oh man -” There is a timer beeping in the kitchen. “And - this is kinda a themed dinner. Around Star Trek? You like Star Trek, right, you said that one time, right?”
“I mean, I like Chris Pine?”
Your boyfriend laughs, nervously. “Okay! Right! Chris Pine! Alright - maybe I’ll need to explain some of these courses…”
He disappears back into the kitchen, and there is some hasty banging and some light cursing. Eventually he emerges, with some Klingon Blood Wine (regular wine), Filet Of Tribble (chicken parm), served over a bed of Risian rotini (“Risa is known as the - well - okay, you know about Risa, right? It’s like… okay, it’s the Pleasure Planet - alright, now you’re laughing, not fair!”).
The chicken parm is a little dried out, the rotini is WAY under cooked, the blood wine is wine, which you’re trying to get a taste for, but still just makes you remember your First Communion more than anything. All in all, the meal is edible, just barely, but it is CLEARLY cooked with love and enthusiasm, and that certainly helps elevate it in your eyes, if not to a roaring success, at least to the level of “not a total disaster, despite”.
13 Likes
Lol nevermind. I read your other reviews. Very clever reviews. Thank you kindly.
3 Likes
UNDER THE COGNOMEN OF EDGAR ALLEN POE:
The meal starts with a fine soup, in a shotglass sized container. “Ah, the in media res special” - perhaps we’ll return to this later in the meal, in a slightly larger portion?
Roasted meat and potatoes follow, with slightly forced conversation with a variety of dinner companions, though once the conversation passes beyond pleasantries and approaches some of the core conceits of life, it becomes fascinating. The meat is some sort of poultry - not as meaty as a chicken, or as it may seem at first glance - maybe it’s not a domesticated bird? Perhaps squab. Something at home in a city, certainly.
The potatoes are crispy, fluffy and salty, and prepared in a way that you’ve not quite encountered before, though very reminiscent, of course, of all the other times you’ve had potatoes.
Along with the meal is dark wine, sweet and bitter with tannins
The dessert course wraps the meal up, referencing the soup at the beginning, tying the flavors in to the herbs from the meat, and somehow still satisfying the diner at the end of the meal. A rosemary shortbread, with lemon curd on top, sweet and sour, opposites united in harmony.
15 Likes
TURN RIGHT:
A well baked party cracker, sprinkled with salt, and a slice of cheddar, mild. Perfectly respectable finger food.
Plus there are about eighty seven more of them on the plate, a few dotted with mustard, a few with a gherkin speared on top. You have to eat them all to finish the meal.
13 Likes
BREAKFAST IN THE DOLOMITES:
In fourth grade I had an assignment. You wrote the steps for making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, then found a partner, and swapped directions with each other.
After that, you would make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, ONLY following the directions as written, and deliberately trying to screw up the process if a direction omitted a step or assumed that you would do it the logical way, instead of verbatim.
This game is that peanut butter and jelly sandwich. The bread is a dry pumpernickel, hard to chew and stale. The peanut butter is crunchy (my preference is smooth, as is the preference of 95% of the population). The jelly is partially crystallized and in need of a good stir. The jelly is on the outside of the sandwich, the peanut butter is spread directly on to the plate, and the sandwich has been cut into strips about a centimeter wide.
The plate is a collector’s item plate, with a picture of mountains that don’t exactly resemble mountains from real life.
To the side is a single cube of honeydew melon, perfectly ripe and sweet.
7 Likes
FOCAL SHIFT:
Noodles from a street vendor, eaten in the rain at night, with neon lights blaring through the smog.
The noodles are plain, but hit the spot. The chew is a little tough, a little satisfyngly springy. The broth is thin, and the main spice is MSG - but that gives it a pleasantly meaty taste, though the portion is lacking in any actual meat.
There’s a bit of spice to it, that kicks in at the end, and makes you tear up a bit in the rain.
8 Likes
UNINTERACTIVE FICTION:
A papercut from the restaurant’s menu.
22 Likes
OK this might be the best one yet!
3 Likes