Get what you really want now and then

You don’t have to read this ramble before you read my little fast food tale. You don’t have to read it after, either. And maybe, for all that, you won’t like my story, ‘Fast Food Ad Infinitum.’ But someone will. You don’t have to be a genius to realize that people crave stories as much as they crave food.

Now people will eat mediocre food. People will eat junk. And people will waste their time on stories that leave them hungry for something better. There are great cooks out there. And there are great writers that you can read for nothing more than your time and attention. But I’m the only writer exactly like me and I can tell a pretty good story. Only I, in fact, can tell you the story you may never have heard before, told in precisely the way I tell it. Maybe it’s the one you’re hungry for when you read it. Maybe not. But that is partly what this piece of writing is all about.

I like food. My parents brought me up that way. For our birthday, we kids got to choose our meal. Mine, for awhile, was mashed potatoes, hamburger gravy, and corn. Mom probably rounded it out a bit. Always pie. I’d lay odds it was coconut cream. Five in our family. I ate a fifth of that cream pie – coconut in the pudding, browned coconut on top of the merengue. No one has ever made coconut cream pie precisely the way my Mom did. I might have had better. I’ve certainly had worse. But having learned to pay attention to food, I knew when I was satisfied. And there was no one else quite like my mom.

You’ve probably heard this kind of thing before and I promise I won’t go all maudlin on you. I mean to go big. The universe is a vast and complicated place. Most of us are one-of-a-kind. My point is that it doesn’t have to be your birthday for you to choose what you will eat. And it’s surprisingly easy for you to figure out what you want. It also can be surprisingly hard to find exactly what you want.

That’s where fast food and other franchises think they’ve got an angle. They think they’ve figured food out down to a formula. If it’s not a one-size-fits-all food thing, it’s at least close enough to what people think that they want to sell billions and they will advertise you to death to convince you that they will satisfy you. And it’s not that they can’t - if you want their package. But I just don’t go looking in their direction for their formula food very often anymore.

As much as I crave food, I crave people and places that make me feel as if I would rather be no place else on this big earth for a little while than where I am sitting and eating someone else’s cooking. A place that’s not just anywhere. People being themselves. I won’t kid you. The food matters to me. And with one-of-a-kind places, the food will vary a little depending on the people making it. It makes me happy just to say that.

I could start by telling you about the egg crème that they make at Aimee’s, but I won’t. If I was going to, I’d tell you something about the people that make those egg crèmes. They’re not clones, or a corporation’s idea of your friendly food server. They’re better than that. But I’ll skip on.

The lentil soup at Aladdin’s down the street is the best I have ever eaten. And I could tell you about the time my wife and I sat out in their sidewalk cafe area and watched a parade of Dog Days runners running and jogging and walking slowly past our table. I bet I ordered the gyro and the soup.

                              

I could go on to say that Rudy’s Pizzeria a few blocks farther makes the best pizza sauce for my money – they say there’s a little wine in it – but maybe I merely prefer it because I was raised on my mom’s hamburger gravy and I just keep going back because I liked Rudy’s sauce the first time I tasted it.

But this is not supposed to be about what I like, although I will recommend the chicken fried steak at this joint in Tonganoxie, and the bun with chopped egg rolls at the Little Saigon Café on 23^rd street. And if you like pork like I like pork, try the birria at MexQuizito. Or there’s the Vindaloo I make at our house. Good food is good food – even if not everyone can agree which is which.

And it’s not really about the ambiance, although I like the burnt-orange walls at Rudy’s and the comfortable way I feel stepping down into their half-basement - sometimes the light, sometimes the dark, coming in through the windows over our heads as we sit in a booth along the old limestone wall.

Or take Cutter’s out near Eudora - just a roadhouse if that’s what you want. But I had sweet potato fries and listened to a friend’s band play old Beetles and Byrds tunes over there. The ribs are good too. I rocked a little. I didn’t stumble out of there and I didn’t need no pea-pickin’ happy meal. I got satisfaction.

Are you getting my drift, yet? Cause I could go on for pages. Places and people and food. Some I’ve gone to and some I’ve met and some things I ate only once. Some I go back for. It’s not always the best I’ve had in my life. But I give myself that chance every time I go into a café like Aimee’s or some other one-of-a-kind restaurant I’ve never been in before.

At Aimee’s, I might not order the club sandwich and an A&W - and it is just a club sandwich, made by hands I recognize, and the A&W is just corporate root beer, but it compliments my sandwich – but at Aimee’s I’m never unhappy eating there. Sometimes I think all I want for my birthday is a gift card from Aimee’s that gives me the exclusive right to sit in the swivel chair at the high counter – the one against the wall where I can stare out over the kitchen area where the baristas are working or out of the window, watching the sun go down. Wouldn’t even need the egg crème. But I do like the egg crème they make there. Never exactly the same – if you pay attention to food the way I pay attention to food - but it’s always the egg crème I want.

But my mom taught me about sharing. So go take my seat. There are still plenty of places to eat where - if not today, then maybe tomorrow - you will get not only what you want, but what you long for in your soul. Good food, too.

Now next week I will offer you my cautionary tale. Some of the names have stayed the same because they were my friends. As for the rest, believe what you want. Today, I believe I want an egg crème at Aimee’s.