Visions of the Black History month menu haunted me, however, so we decided to take a chance. I prepared for the worst and when I saw three or four available tables, my heart sank. “Noon on a weekday?” I murmured to Lucy. “This can’t be good.” She ignored me as is her custom and we followed our waitress (“LaToi”) to a booth. It seemed pretty clean to me. I closely examined the table and wall for smeared boogers or greasy fingerprints and finding none, decided Jared is simply a neurotic fag and picked up the menu. LaToi returned to take our drink orders.
“Do you have club soda?” I asked her. They have a full bar in there so I was pretty sure the answer was yes.
“No,” she answered.
I frowned and turned the menu over. I noticed they offered a grape Kool-aid martini.
“I’d like one, please,” I told her briskly, closing the menu as Lucy humbly requested plain water.
I really wanted fried chicken, grits, and greens. They offered all three but not together. I noticed they had a “smothered” fried chicken served with mashed potatoes and gravy and a picture formed in my mind of a thick blanket of white (shudder!) slop hiding a bumpy mound on a plate. I was going to have to make some inquiries.
LaToi returned with the drinks and also a basket of plain cornbread and mini sweet potato cornbread muffins. Both were still hot and instantly melted the butter Lucy scraped out of the tiny Land-o-Lakes tray. I have to say that they were both totally excellent and I found myself marveling at the miracle of cornmeal. That’s how good it was. It was akin to the simultaneously banal and complex epiphanies experienced most commonly by fans of blotter acid.
After a few minutes, we were ready to order. I took a deep breath and began the negotiations of tailoring their menu to accommodate my whim.
“‘Smothered,’” I said to LaToi, looking deeply into her moist brown eyes. “Does that mean covered with gravy?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. Here’s the deal: I don’t want it smothered in gravy, and I also don’t want the mashed potatoes. I want grits. Can I get that?”
“Uhhhh…it’d be…like…three or four dollars to add the grits,” she said.
“Three or four dollars?” I said, feigning confusion and pointing to the words “$1 for substitutions,” on the menu.
“That’s for regular sides,” she said in a matter-of-fact way that told me that even though grits cost about five cents per serving, the irregularity of their “side” status meant they were going to cost more than a dollar.
“Since we have the grits already made,” she went on, “we can still substitute them, though.”
I pondered this briefly. Grits were an accompaniment to at least two other items on the laminated, permanent lunch menu; that is, not a daily special. So, presumably, they were just as “already made” as everything else that was permissible to substitute.
“So, what is it, how many pieces of chicken is it?” I asked her, putting the grits issue aside for the time being.
“You get…a leg and…a…a thigh,” she concluded.
“Can I get a breast?”
“We have wings,” she said obstinately.
“What about breasts?”
“So I can’t get a breast instead?”
“We could do two breasts maybe. This is the lunch menu,” she added unnecessarily.
“Okay, well, I can’t eat two. How about just one instead of the leg and thigh?” I emphasized the “and” quite heavily hoping to appeal to her sense of two as being more than one and therefore a sacrifice on my part.
“I don’t think we can do that.” She seemed to be reverting to her earlier rigid “grits” stance so I sighed in a put-upon way and looked back down at the menu.
“We have wings,” she repeated helpfully in case I missed the 10 places wings were offered. Wings with grits, wings with hoppin’ john, wings with shrimp, etc.
“Okay,” I capitulated. “Wings. I’ll get the wings with grits and greens. Thanks.” I shut the menu and looked at Lucy, who was staring raptly at me.
“It’s either the catfish or the shrimp,” she said, looking at LaToi. “Which do you think?”
“Well…I love catfish, you know what catfish is. The other one, I haven’t had it but I’ve seen it and it looks good. If you want somethin’ you know what it is, get the catfish. If you feel like having somethin’ new, get the shrimp.”
Lucy seemed grateful for this rationale and briskly ordered the shrimp with grits.
We discussed ESP and ghosts like all girls do when there are no men present and I examined the other patrons. Everyone was well-dressed. I counted three TVs. The one facing me was showing the Food Network. A lady with too many teeth made what looked like a tomato smoothie in a blender then poured it into a tall, rectangular glass.
Finally LaToi appeared with our food. It did not take an especially long time but I was starving so it felt like an hour. There were four enormous wings heaped on one side of the plate with two small side bowls tucked on the other. Lucy’s was a large bowl of grits topped with slightly blackened shrimp and half-inch cubes of what looked like carmelized ham, if ham can be carmelized. It looked pretty good. She ordered the fried corn side, which was not really fried-looking enough for me.
My greens had shreds of pork throughout and were faintly hot with chili.
The grits were outstanding. The wings, however, were bogue. This could be due to the fact that I don’t like wings. It must be, actually, because the pieces of batter I peeled off were really good. It, too, was faintly hot, and also salty, which is excellent because I love salt.
