How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

There aren't many places for a girl to stop for a bite en route to work. Not around here, anyway. When a new joint opened a few months back, I was elated. Over the moon. Ecstatic. I'm familiar with the group and confident I could finally get a coffee and a muffin with the peace of mind that it hadn't recently been reconstituted in a microwave.

(I eat the shit out of reconstituted food things, especially the apple fritters from a certain local gas station chain).

This morning I even grabbed a quarter on my way out the door, guaranteeing to avoid the $10 "but I was just stopping for a second" parking meter damnation.

This place calls itself a cafe, but is unlike any cafe I've ever know. I've never been to Morocco or the Maldives or Singapore and in my mind this place has em all beat, on the rails, got nothin. Crazy beautiful, detailed, and nuanced. The decor is unmatchable.

So this morning, bolstered by my parking victory, I wanted to treat myself to a muffin. It's decent, healthy-ish, and has little crunchy bits, which I'm into. Also at $3.95 I consider it a bargain, as it's enough muffin for two breakfasts. Or, let's be honest, second breakfast.

I walk up to the gleaming pastry counter - awash in curds and swirls and ganache and gold dusted raspberries - feeling like I can't possibly belong here but YOU HAVE MY MUFFIN and so here I am. The young woman at the counter was staring at me, blinking, looking down at the register, looked back up at me. Blink. There I stood. Blink. After a few desperately awkward minutes I had to break the silence -

"Are you...can I order from you? I'm sorry". (I don't know why I apologized)

"Yes."

".....can I just have that muffin to go?"

"Yes."

"Do you guys have any juices...? I need something green in my life." (Desperate laugh)

"Yes."

I'll spare you the remainder of the transaction, as none of it improved. I basically ran away from the cafe with its hand polished, hand carved floor tile imported from wherever.

I know. I know. It's just a goddamn muffin. Not even a great muffin, just a softball-sized excuse for fiber that doesn't come packaged in a gummy bear. (Does anyone else think those are super depressing? More for another day.)

I keep rolling around in my head how *I* was the one who felt awkward, and wrong, and needed to leave ASAP. Do others feel that way? Does everyone feel that way? It's a muffin, not a blood transfusion. Who really cares?

We should care. I care. Those stupid hand polished tiles should care. We're living in Romanesque times here yet we've lost all semblance of basic communication, history, and lest I say it, hospitality.

Lately I've been feeling like I get better customer service at abject shithole dives. Just the cruddiest, crappiest, most Sysco-fueled enterprises of them all. But you know what, I never feel awkward. I never feel like I'm not Instagram famous so I can't hang. Never feel like I have to apologize for their lack of a greeting, a smile, or god forbid a conversation. Never have to climb over a 4" gap between impossibly small tables cubby-holed together. Apologizing. Does the girl working the pastry counter understand what a massive impact someone in her role can have on her community? I KNOW the answer here is no, but when did that happen? Restaurant family, isn't that why we're here? The ONLY reason we're here?

I passed a billboard the other day advertising...well honestly I'm not sure what it was advertising, but it showed a sullen looking food service employee with the caption "would you like fries with that?" Totally damning, totally elitist, totally unnecessary. I'm by no means anti-education or raising yourself up but why shame? Why are we shaming ANYONE for working!? Isn't it bad enough that we work ourselves to death at the hands of emotional and mental beatdowns from men wearing $1000 fur-lined Gucci loafers? But no, that's not enough. But let's hammer that shame home by reinforcing the notion that we are subservient. Our jobs aren't good enough. Our lives aren't good enough. Not in this era of "Self Care" as a privilege, not a right.

We've lost it.

I've gotten off track.

My husband and I recently stopped into a tourist-y place that's only open seasonally, for a couple of drinks and a snack. Just a change of pace. Frozen seafood, frozen margaritas, great sunsets. Party deck. Nautical decor. Wet naps. You know the place. I recognized a server who'd helped us last season, a young kid of maybe 25 called Josh. Not only did he remember us, but he remembered our drink order, and came running over to shake our hands when he saw us in another section. Based solely on that encounter and a passable Caesar salad, we went back a few weeks later. Same thing - joyful greeting, lovely conversation. Impeccable service. Was the food good? Jesus lord no. We joke the food was better when their kitchen burnt down and they resorted to a cobbled together outdoor grill to get the job done. But you know what, we'll continue to go back. Until Josh figures out he can do better. Then we'll go where he is.

But maybe that's the point. Maybe there isn't a better. Or the perceived better isn't, but we tolerate it for the sake of inclusion. Getting the reservation, getting the likes, the pictures, the attention. The goddamn attention.

The most popular restaurant here (here is wherever you are), has a wine list that that names "Ashley Olsen", "tennis courts" and "gel pens" as tasting notes.

I probably apologized to them, too.

See you at the gas station, y'all. Might not be good but it sure ain't bad.

The Last Supper

Dear Tony,

I don’t know what to call you. You’ve never been “Tony” to me, and you’ve certainly never been “Uncle Tony”, as some have taken to referring to you. Frankly you’ve only ever been “Anthony Bourdain”, but addressing a letter as such also seems wrong, somehow.

I still don’t quite know if I’m ready to write. I don’t quite know yet what it is I need to say. They’ve stopped writing about you. Last I saw was an article detailing your toxicology report, that no narcotics were found in your system at time of death. That and you’d skipped dinner the night before your body was found. What else was there to measure?

You stared down the ultimate Undertoad with no Last Supper. That thought and the image of dear Eric Ripert finding you have brought me down, at times. Was he surprised? Did he somehow know what awaited when he knocked quietly on your door and, gentle, called your name?

People who were close to you said you had a darkness in the “last months”, but wasn’t that darkness omnipresent? Hasn’t it always been a little bit of what has driven you so hard to seek further and farther afield the satisfaction “normal” people find in daily life? Taking a shower, reading the news, bad coffee, worse food. What about your wiring drove your incessant drum beat, and is that ultimately what stopped your march through the universe?

In the book “The Last Supper”, you told Melanie Dunea that eating was about submission. That if you were to die tomorrow, your last meal on earth would consist of “Roast bone marrow with parsley and caper salad, with a few toasted slices of baguette and some good sea salt”. You also told her that “Given that I’m ostensibly facing imminent death, I’d probably prefer being alone”. This was published in 2007. Did it somehow cross your mind the day you showed yourself out? In any of the preceding days? I know it is a game, but is it really? You left us in France, bone marrow aplenty. You said you wanted to leave the world naked, screaming, and covered with blood. Instead you went silently, dangling from the rafters that held up the night.

I have so many questions for which there will never be answers.

There is a very large part of me that feels like I don’t deserve to be feeling this way (especially after all this time). It's almost been a year. There are those in your life that loved you in real time - that LOVE you in real time, still. You are, to me, a fantasy; you have only ever been my imaginary friend. And frankly I think I would have probably bored you - frankly I feel like most of your fans probably bored you. But every day I hoped that I wouldn’t. Every day I hoped that you’d find the same light in me.

You took me with you. You brought all of us with you. You showed me family, and where I need to be, where I belong. You brought me to Montreal and Southeast Asia, for which I will be eternally grateful. Showed me that the ideas I’ve always been drawn to have a foundation in the history of food culture, and that the beauty surrounding it all is legitimate, fleeting, and incredibly important. You showed me that it’s all we have. I hang on to that beauty and that hope but in my quieter days, am saturated with the understanding that ultimately, it wasn’t enough for you. That despite the incredible community elevating you and your words, it let you down. We all let you down. There are many, I’m certain, who would argue that YOU let US down. I don’t know what to say to that. Did you let your daughter down? I don’t know the answer. Probably. Does she understand? Not right now, no. Will she ever understand? I’m not sure. That understanding comes from a very dark, very cold place. All I can do is send her, and her mother, and your mother, peace and light and comfort that you are no longer burning. To burn bright is to burn hot, and Icarus shows us, it cannot last. Like stars. The brighter they are, the hotter they are, and unless they’ve got the mass of the sun on their side, they will burn through their supply and explode, supernova style.

Where’s your supernova? Has it been you, all along?

I miss you. I'm grateful for you. I never knew you, and I never will.

Thank you.