Glory Ho

Recently, when on the topic of buffets (I have no idea) with a couple friends, we learned that a friend of theirs had recently seen Mike Shanahan at Souper Salad. This news was disturbing. I’ll even call it disappointing.

Why is it that I cared? Why is it that I have such disdain for the all-American “buffet”? Well, let’s see. Germs and obesity are at the top of the list. I could go on. But I happened to have written a blog about buffets awhile back. And I think there’s a little connection. . .

When I was young,  a day at Southpark Mall with my Mom meant Foxmoor, Benetton and if we were feeling luxurious–a little Mark Henri. A paper-wrapped pixie from Fannie May was sugarcoated elegance and Orange Julius seemed to be the early version of a Starbucks Frappucino. Lunch was another important decision. While Chinese made me feel international and Riverside Cafe seemed intellectual beyond my years, when I was no more than ten, when I still had hair down to my butt, a trip to Bishops, the buffet, the one where blue-haired ladies with big pocketbooks bragged about the BookIt accomplishments of their grandchildren, was like attending a Broadway Show. And I guess I’ve just figured out why.

It was always dark–the clang of chatter and silverware mysteriously emerging from its shadowed maze of swiftly moving chefs and stainless steel surfaces. The neatly wrapped marshmallow salads and compact bowls of cole-slaw, each screaming “pick me!”, rested in rows before my empty tray. And the chocolate-shaving-topped-cream-pie, saran-wrapped to perfection without a smudge or smear in sight, seemed like a special delivery. At Bishops, I could see everything, inspecting for secretly inserted onions or nuts, before making a commitment. From its own pure white china plate, my gravy didn’t know how to get near my bread and my corn could never creep into my tapioca pudding.  While some of these preference speak to the early stages of my neuroticism, Bishops buffet was plainly and simply about endless variety and protection of the commitment-phobic. And especially at ten, when jello flavor was a high priority,  Bishops Buffet empowered me.

During our time in Bulgaria, right after we were asked about our favorite Bulgarian food, the subject of American food would arise. After we denied that McDonald’s hamburgers were our national dish, they wanted to know, if not fast food, what DID we eat? Well, um, usually Indian, Mexican, Thai, Japanese or Italian, which  left us with no answer at all. When we considered holiday meals, mashed potatoes came quickly to mind, but what else? Barbeque ribs seemed American, but very regional. What about hot dogs? Macaroni and cheese? We eventually decided that the beauty of America is the variety–that because of our many immigrant ingredients, you could find endless ethnic culinary possibilities on any major metropolitan avenue.

As we travel, we notice how little tolerance we have for the same song, the same shirt or the same sandwich. It’s no wonder because America is the ultimate buffet. Our nation, like so many others, still embodies centuries-old traditions. We just have so darn many of them. And if our immigrants still cook, bake and celebrate with their own native traditions from Ireland, Germany, Mexico or Italy, all the better.

Bishops is long gone from Southpark Mall, but I guess we need not worry, ‘cuz Souper Salad is all the rage now. Even for Denver’s millionaires.

Andrea: What about a vegetarian eggs benedict with tomatoes and avocados? Eh? All that protein and vitamins with some buttery fat drizzled on top?

Stomach: Are you kidding?? I HATE eggs benedict! You’re gonna have to go to the bathroom before you’re even out of the restaurant!

Andrea: Okaaayyy, let’s try a turkey sandwich with mustard on whole wheat with some baby carrots, sugar snap peas and a grapefruit cup? Is that better? A little fruit, a little vegetables, a little meat? Nice and balanced?

Stomach: I’ve never liked vegetables or fruit, to be honest. I’ve only been pretending all this time. You’ve really messed up now. This afternoon of meetings is going to be filled with the need to pass gas. Have fun.

Andrea: Right. Tonight I’ll have a nice Tortilla-crusted tilapia fillet with some sauteed spinach and a little rice pilaf cooked in olive oil. God, I’m being so healthy, someone please pass me a Dorito. But maybe this will make me feel better.

Stomach: She cannot get it right. Let’s see, tonight’s line up includes some minor cramps before bed time, then some major cramps around 2:30 AM, followed by an hour of constipation.

Andrea: Okay, fine. Fuck you. If a turkey sandwich makes you angry, then why not just go for it. I’m going to Lori and Gary’s for chili tonight. There will be cheese, sour cream, tortillas, beans, the whole shebang.

Stomach: Well this attitude isn’t going to help your cause at all! Whatever, it’s your funeral.

We’re in a kitchen again. The most basic of African diners. Her name is Miriam. It was eggs and avocados by Grace in Lake Naivasha. Chapatti and beans by the team at the YWCA in Kisumu. Cabbage, potatoes and blue lantern-light at Mamma Joyce’s in Bujagali Falls. Their food leaves us content, regular and calm. We sit facing outward. The man in front of us–I can’t see his hands—I can barely make out his face. He could be massaging someone’s back, making a pie or gutting fish. But I know he is rolling our chapatti—a kind of homemade tortilla-pancake. The whole cow’s milk has become a soft silk bedspread above my tin cup of tea. A breeze I cannot feel threatens the candle, which is stuck to the white plastic patio table with wax. On the other side of the metal cage window, fluorescent strips light the space between sunset and dark in this ghetto enclave of local chores. Women pick tiny rocks from sacks of rice and fry fish in oil. Men carry gas-gallon containers of water on their heads across the plywood-bridged sewer canals. A black cat slides into a wheelbarrow of scraps. Around them is a mishmash of sticks, poles, two-by-fours, sheets of wavy tin, cement blocks and plywood bridges across sewer canals.

Michael says, there is an inverse relationship between the amount of money you spend and the richness of your experience.

The Pacific Hotel was sort of in the ghetto. I mean, it was.

Continue reading ‘Pringles, Ghetto Kitchens and Bittersweet Red Chilis’

Back in Antakya with the girls, they treated us to a different restaurant each night, planning or outings as if they’d known us for years. Even when we were ready for bed, they insisted: more tea, more fatoush, more kunefe.  

I never caught the name of this particular place, but I’ll never forget it.

The air seemed finite, like the space inside a paper sack. There were endless rooms. Each wall was a giant quilt from Anthropologie, murals outlined with frayed edges wandered freely. Fake antiques and hanging hollow gourds tried very hard. Curtains and beads swung above a mud-room’s amount of leopard slippers. In every space, wood stoves grew up through the ceiling. Half-tended herb gardens lived in makeshift containers and macramé cooed from around fierce yucca plants while fat and flowered women wandered without obvious purpose. The ceiling was burlap. The floor a notch above dirt. Between, ropes and bamboo had been forced together to form a very odd couple. Buddhist and Roman statues posed with uncertainty as if they’d missed their stop at the museum. Men with apathetic expressions rolled dough for traditional Turkish dessert behind glass. Hookah pipes snaked round red and royal-blue trees of tar. This restaurant couldn’t decide if it wanted to live in Egypt or within the confines of a 1960s commune. Like any obedient customer, I mimicked what I saw. Utter disorientation.

In our brown room with old photographs and rugpiles, we were served Kunefe, a popular dessert in Southeast Turkey. Kunefe was essentially baked cheese, splashed with honey and covered with a thin toasted crust and a toss of pistachios. It was both heavenly and heavy. A languid women served tea on on a wood tray, each glass bottom already glistening with piles of sugar, the granules dreaming of the cavities they would soon create in my mouth.

But nothing could make up for the Fish.

Against one wall above the couch, a backlit fish tank hummed with purpose, as if only following the rules. Doing its job. Plugged into the wall. Inside, a goldfish shone bright in the corner of the tank, orange with the unnatural hue of Sunkist soda, twirling, flipping and sliding along the glass with the water’s current.

Except the goldfish was dead.

Who knows when the submission had come. When the food had been forgotten. Why the fish had not been flushed.

But worse than the discomfiting loss of life was the fish’s fate. To be a puppet to the kinetics of the tank’s current. To flip and flop without will or control as artificial life sent its body in circles. This too closely resembled the life of people who’d given up on dreams. . .on change. . . on going their own way. Because at a glance, the fish looked alive. But in reality, its fishy little soul was long gone.

So I sat there having a hard time not looking at it. . .hoping I would suddently realize it was actually alive, fidgeting at the icky energy of a place trying too hard to be trendy and failing with the most simple of Feng Shui principles.

And as much as I enjoy sushi, I am amazed that I still think of that dead fish with sympathy and sadness.

You never know what travel might do to you. I mean, yeah, all that deep stuff. But even my tastes are changing.

(Photo by Hurina)

Take coffee. Somehow, back in the early 90s, when putting a Starbucks in a Starbucks was a funny joke, I just never needed the caffeine. And who wanted something bitter? Blech. But it was also about the morning ritual. I just couldn’t be bothered. In fact, I frequently wondered how people could spend precious time and dollars on mere liquid with a clearly marketeered mocha-triple-blend-Indochina title. But, I’ve come around. Sugar, milk, and the schwe schwe (slowly slowly) inshallah (God Willing) Middle East attitude, is making me take time to stop and drink the coffee. And it tastes good.

Olives. In Greece, Andy turned me onto the garlic-stuffed variety. Then I found them bursting with almonds. In Turkey, there was the olive farm. It seems only right to consume the product you grow, right? My father was a corn and soybean farmer for a fifteen years. While his kind of corn fed mainly cattle, I took pride in consuming the little yellow kernels off the cob, as if I was somehow helping to earn our living. So when picking them by day, I knew that all olives, which lets face it, are really just salt and oil dressed up in a silky cape, must become a part of my life. And oh, how they have.

Cats. When I was 7 or 8, I got bit by a cat. Looking back, I see that this particular cat was tired of my endless game called “I-want-to-hold-you. No-I-REALLY-want-to-hold-you.” But I avoided cats from then on. A decade later, my roommate in college, as part of joint custody with an ex-boyfriend, exposed me to Alex, the evil of all felines. Likely due to kittyhood trauma, this cat was fearless and defensive 24/7. A hisser and a scratcher, at parties, she’d perch on the arm of the couch and swat at people walking by. What’s hard to believe is that my roommate then married my brother and so this cat has become part of my FAMILY! But no matter. From this, I entered into a full-on cat-phobia, including nightmares. If anyone argued, pop culture was on my side. From Lady and the Tramp to Pet Cemetery, the cat had been typecast as a villain who was always picking on the dumb blonde dog long ago.

But at the olive farm in Turkey, for reasons a therapist will one day determine, I withdrew from my usual position within the skin of the social scene and found connection and reassurance with fur. I felt more at one with the animals. In particular, petting the cat, this self-sufficient creature which cleaned itself constantly (when I was, at the time, relegated to just a few showers a week,) seemed like a win-win situation. Somehow, my need to nurture finally swelled past human relationships.

However, upon wandering the streets of foreign cities ever since, and witnessing just how defensive cats are, especially compared to their canine counterpart, I realize that what I’ve never liked about cats was what I’ve never liked about myself. They’re always freaking out as if every passing human is plotting to kill them or they’re not gonna get enough milk. It’s as if I have realized, noting the goodwill and generosity of every stranger, that the world is a good place. That I shouldn’t be a fighter, but a lover. And after crossing that line, I looked back to the see the cold, bitchy cat, armor still strapped across its fur, paws up, ready for a rumble. So I went back, scooped it into my arms for life and consider it my duty to beckon this beast toward a better place.

Beirut, upon first glance, is a Disneyland of dreaminess. There’s Chili’s, Hard Rock Cafe Starbucks, Subway, and this bizarre obsession with retro-style American diners, such as the one you see behind my unhappy husband.

Because we want it so badly to be true, we are instant victims–convinced of this burger-oasis between the chicken, hummus and fatoush all around it. At first, as soda-pop-jerk-dressed waiters walk the floor, cadillac headlights glow across our red-leather booth, and we spot bacon-cheeseburers and coke-floats on the menu, we are forced to close our mouth and dab a napkin at our drool. But it’s only one bite in, and one exchange with the server when we know we’d been duped.

There’s something special about American cattle and exaggerated customer service. And it just doesn’t travel very well.

Here’s what we had for lunch today in the souk (winding market).

It’s called Fuul and it’s a mix of beans, yogurt, oil, chickpeas and fresh coriander with sweet raw onion. Community water glass and pita bread included. Cost:30 Syrian Pounds (65 cents)

Other Syrian costs. . . .

Hotel Room: $10/night
Kikkoman Soy Sauce for Cooking: $1.50
Falafel & Egg Wrap: 50 cents
Small Bottle of Water: 30 cents
Hour of Internet: 95 cents
Syrian Times Newspaper (English): 10 cents
Large, Squeezed While You Watch Grenadine, Banana & Orange Juice: $1
Sheraton Christmas Lunch Buffet with Alcohol: $57 (Thanks Mom and Dad)

We shared our last bit of Mexican ingredients with a couple Bulgarian friends. . .
I think they enjoy this food as much as we do. It’s not exactly the same as home,
but perhaps that’s the beauty of being abroad.

I did it. I starved and I survived. The last few days were a breeze, by the way, but still. I’m glad it’s over.

I will do some kind of cleanse, probably annually. Here’s why:

1) Empowerment The mental power needed to abstain from eating for ten days (no cheating) can be described easily in one word: empowering. It’s worth doing JUST for this.

2)Digestive Rest While I try to steer clear of regularly eating fried, spicy and fatty foods, I do sometimes Continue reading ‘It’s Over’

I’m just writing to report a bizarre irony. Or maybe its not ironic at all as that Alanis Morissette song has forever screwed my sense of this word, although, thanks to repetitive viewings of Reality Bites, I do know that irony is “when the literal meaning is the exact opposite of the actual meaning.” Yet, still, I am confused. Perhaps it’s the lack of food.

Ironic or not, I’m talking about the American tradition called the doggie bag.

In the United States, whether you Continue reading ‘The Doggie Bag’