Shorthand for Nothing

I have apparently neglected to write about THE FRIENDLY TOAST which totally merits the all caps. It is precisely what a restaurant ought to be: a place with cheap coffee and enormous portions of delicious food. It features a menu filled with tasty options, enough kitschy, bizarre, and terrifying decorations to make anyone feel like they have walked into a movie, and the young indie kid service (usually) which make the experience feel more or less exactly right.

I have yet to eat something at the Friendly Toast that was anything less than wonderful. Today I ordered the Drunkard’s French Toast, which comes with a Grand Marnier and strawberry sauce, which is amazing. It looks like a cartoon caricature of French toast: the toast is thick and enormous, the sauce is a lively pink color. In sum, it looked more like French toast than French toast does. Today I ate the Platonic ideal of French toast. It is also very veggie-friendly, and fatty-friendly.

As might be expected, the atmosphere of the place changes quite a bit from brunch to evenings. While it is bustling and busy for the brunch crowd, come evening, it’s fairly quiet and empty. It is easier to talk and admire the terrifying décor. It is even possible to hijack wireless from a neighbouring establishment, enjoy the coffee, and do some interwebbing.

I have heard rumor that they ar e hoping to get a 24-hour license for Cambridge. This would truly be a great day for all of Cambridge. It would stop being useless after midnight-ish.

(that one kind of fell apart at the end)

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Though Mac OS continues to resist being installed on my Macbook (sigh), I have installed Ubuntu on it now, which is less likely to make me go insane than the XO, since the screen is not tiny and not designed for human eyes and the hardware can actually run more than one tab in Firefox at a time, without crashing horribly. I might even be able to run music!

I still have a ways to go before functionality is fully restored, of course, but I am reasonably confident I’ll do fine more or less indefinitely now. If you have any suggestions for optimizing Ubuntu please send them my way!

But that’s not what I want to talk about. I want to talk about the tacos the talented Rachel Mercer made this evening (they were pretty much wonderful and there is not a lot else to say about them, because I am not a food person, but man I have missed eating good tacos), and the board and card games we played. It was Settlers of Catan, which I have previously discussed (I won) and a game called BurnRate, in which you are a company in the .com boom, trying to hemorrhage money slower than everyone else, which is ridiculously fun. We won, but relatively narrowly, and I credit it to everyone not knowing the rules more than skill.

Catan was all skill, of course.

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I’m never sure what to make of Charlie’s Kitchen. It has a very cheap cheeseburger which is tasty, but other, much tastier things for the prices I’ve come to expect from most restaurants. It’s got a full bar and is a seat-yourself establishment, but it doesn’t seem terribly bar-like apart from that. Charlie’s is a place of indecision.

Too often we duck our heads in and it’s too busy and decide to go to the IHOP just a few stores down. I feel like we overlook it too often. Especially upstairs it’s almost exactly the sort of atmosphere I appreciate in a restaurant, though the coffee is not as plentiful as I’d like. But then, it’s got a full bar. It’s a place for ordering beer. Maybe I’m too used to late nights with unlimited and rapid refills on coffee. It seems perfect, but there’s something slightly askew.

I feel a little odd writing this. I really enjoy Charlie’s, and wish I went more often. But it has an atmosphere which is deceptively close to the cafes I’ve always frequented–just something is a little off. At Charlie’s I always feel like I can’t quite make up my mind about where I am, what I want.

The food is damn tasty, though, and the drinks are reasonably priced. I think I should abandon the notion that it’s a place for coffee.

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It didn’t take me long after moving to Boston to find a diner that was open for late nights, even if the public transit here closes too early to have enjoyed the frenzied late nights I have come to know and love at other such establishments. The South Street Diner fit the bill.

Here in New England, the word “diner” has a different meaning. In the northwest it tends to mean the same thing as cafe or restaurant, with connotations of truck stop. In New England they come with history. They’re made to resemble trains. But the culture, the feeling, what has always drawn me in, remain the same.

So it felt familiar to me even while it felt like rediscovering the greasy spoon scene. The food was beautifully greasy–French fries covered in gravy, juicy burgers, food which does not apologize for its effect on your health. The lighting, after dark, has that purple glow that comes of red and blue neon signs providing much of the illumination, with enough overhead lighting to prevent it from being a headache.

I’m not a regular yet, but a few of the servers have a way of making me look forward to becoming one, and that’s the sort of thing I look forward to when all I want is all the coffee in the world.

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I’m going to start cataloging my notes for Meetings With Remarkable Men here. I’m going to start by exploring some of my earliest experiences with diners.

It all really started in high school, at my church youth group. After the evening’s events we would often go to Shari’s to further socialize. There were large groups of us. We were loud and annoying and didn’t tip, and if any of the servers who had the misfortune of serving us are reading this, I am very, very sorry. As large groups often are, it was loud and often chaotic. People forgot about food, conversations were fragmented and often overlapped with other conversations, and I often found myself bouncing from one to the other–probably listening. In groups, I listen. It’s almost more enjoyable.

It was a stark contrast to the quiet of the youth group–which ended on an introspective note, and the socialization that took place after was always subdued while still in the building. This was people in their element, being served, talking, laughing, enjoying themselves, pretending the rest of the universe didn’t exist–and in many ways pretending the rest of the night never happened. I didn’t develop people-watching tendencies until much later, but I started to think of the late-night diner as a neutral zone. No authority figures–waitresses certainly didn’t count to this group. For a high school student, there are few occasions when there is no chance of interacting with someone in authority, be it a parent, a teacher, a youth pastor, or otherwise. The other options are movie theaters, or a parent being out of town for the weekend–one of which was generally not an ideal time for socializing, the other of which was hardly reliable, especially for a kid like myself, who seldom simply went somewhere just to hang out.

I enjoyed this little routine, of bumming a ride out and a ride back, drinking a milkshake, talking, laughing, being loud and obnoxious and proud of it. I was free from social responsibility and free to be a part of the group. This declined as some of the older, more charismatic kids graduated and moved on, and I started slipping away from my religion and, now that I could drive, doing more independent things. But it was always a positive place in my mind.

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On January 5, I tried miraculin for the first time. Good times were had by all but on the whole I found myself slightly unimpressed. While PBR definitely took on a sweeter, vaguely cream soda-like quality, it still tasted like PBR. Guinness was impressive but I was getting more coffee than chocolate flavor–not bad, but my first urge was to want to add sugar. Candies seemed largely unaffected, but the kick was absent from both sour and hot–which did make them more palatable, to be fair.

I have two theories, since this seemed to be a common theme. One, I did not successfully coat the entire tongue–and I imagine the back and sides are important to the full experience. Two, I drank beverages too quickly after consumption. I imagine it needs time to sit, or something.

Lemons were definitely a great success. The juice especially was one of the most delicious things I had ever tasted. But as far as the evening went, I’m not sure I really felt like the miraculin really defined it. I enjoyed the Ethiopian food we had before a lot more.

I can’t really complain, though. The company was, as always, superb.

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