GUEST POST--TOAST IS TOAST WITH ANDRE AND CINDY

Today's guest post is from local aesthete and man of arts and letters, Andre Prudhomme.

Thoughts of grand breakfasts swam through our heads as the night of December 1st drew to a close—I had taken a dear friend to Flint to pick up a quantity of good drywall, and neglecting dinner, found myself very hungry by the end of the night. Luckily I’d been able to furnish my insides with a thick morass of stout, but Cindy hadn’t the option to supplement solid food for good beer, so she took to pretzel rods, and we lumbered through the night. Needless to say, upon waking we found ourselves extremely famished.

“Breakfast. Where do you wanna go?”

“Well, it’s either Toast or Sam’s,” Cindy sighed.

We have our regular haunts, but rising after noon, those certain standbys were cut in half. So we found ourselves not thinking too hard, and with these two options.

“Let’s go to Sam's,” Cindy suggested, “You’re hungry, it’d be good.”

“Maybe... No, let’s go to Toast, the coffee...” Coffee is such an intimate part of the morning, and truthfully, the coffee at Sam's is not to standard. Toast became the victor.

As usual, when arriving at Toast, we found the back parking lot to be populated by cars belonging to aloof assholes; their haphazard idea of parking left little room for our little vehicle. Scuttling through the causeway I noticed a sign on the door of the adjacent restaurant giving hours, 4-9 PM, Friday and Saturday. I thought aloud, “My, that place must be fantastic!” Luckily the restaurant held only lunchgoers and not the usual hungover elites in for their weekly shovelful of “The Cure.”

It being a Wednesday we were able to seat ourselves and chose a table under a newly decorated wall, adorned with what must be the Christmas refuse of Anna’s Coffee Shop (God bless her).

We promptly ordered water and coffee and settled in with the menus, I determined to stray from the bacon and gouda omelet, my usual.

As quickly as we received our beverages Cindy commented, “This is going to be a while.”

Already she observed (what I later deduced) to be the waiter, and then a second man in the kitchen, operating the grill and dishwashing duties, taking on even the third task of bussing. The duo was operating the entire establishment.
Of course there was a table of demanding old ladies gumming up the works, so this meager staff (surely determined by some colleague’s “illness”) were already sinking into what seemed a maelstrom of gigantic proportions.

Our server was finally able to make it back for our order (and refill the coffee); Cindy deciding on oatmeal with a side of sausage and I choosing the Farmer’s Omelet, not a profound choice, but a great morning standby. Seeing as it had been nearly 24 hours since I’d eaten, I longed for the gluttonous portion.

As always Cindy was correct in her prediction—we talked of the week’s events, orated wild tales for our salt and pepper shakers (small bears in aprons), and waited for our order.

Finally the hustling server delivered a bowl of grey matter which Cindy immediately deemed “Soupy”; I with my lifelong abstinence of oatmeal couldn’t tell, but the porridge looked awfully drab and tasteless.

More revolting to me was the plateful of breakfast I received: the home fries appeared to be mutated raisins mixed with fried cheese and possibly pancake batter, accompanied by a pile of eggs and sausage lumps. A Farmer’s Omelet houses sausage, green peppers, onions, potatoes, and American cheese—this pile exhibited some vegetable pieces probably frozen around last Christmas (resurrected for this meal) with a portion of cheese lodged at the south end of the omelet, and uncertain trunks of sausage scattered about. As on the side, the potatoes exhibited a small, wrinkled appearance. However, in the omelet these tuberous pieces were at least edible, being soaked in the watery, half cooked egg like brine, which poorly housed this collage.

As soon as I saw that white runoff of the eggs I became appalled, pouring some obscenity across the table and cursing the very nook I had chosen for our repast. The gruel and sausages seemed to appease Cindy, though satisfaction certainly didn’t emanate from her side of the table. I struggled through, leaving a plate of withered potatoes astride a soupy remainder, and a sad side of dry rye on a small plate by the coffee. Yes, as lame as it is, even the toast was subpar.

R.I.P. "ANNA"

 ✝


The end of an era.

STANDOFF AT SHILLA

The first meal Stavros and I ever took together was at a Japanese/Korean joint by my old job in Troy called Shilla. I think Shilla used to be a place called Trini and Carmen’s, where my sister once barfed after too many margaritas when she was still practicing drinking. It’s got a tabletop barbecue scene on one side and a sushi bar on the other. I always eat on the sushi side because I prefer not to have acrid fumes blazing the hair and follicles from my face while I eat. I tricked Stavros into meeting me there on our first quasi-date by pretending that it was equidistant from our workplaces, when in fact it was approximately 1.2 miles from my job and 47 miles from his. With this foundation in place, Shilla is obviously a place we both hold dear.

We hadn’t been there in a while so we decided to go last Saturday evening following a trip to the nearby “Collection.”

NOTE: I would like to preface this story by admitting that neither of us was at our finest after staying up rather late the night before at a party.

At 5 pm, it was already pitch dark. The Shilla sign glowed feebly in the mist and as we approached the drive, I noted only two other cars in the lot. To make matters more sinister, my new phone (birthday present from Stavros) rang as I was setting the parking brake and its unfamiliar ring confused and startled me.  There was no name associated with the number, and the voice that barked out at me could have belonged to any one of my male friends.

“How was the party!” it demanded to know.

“Albert?” I tried.

“What?”

“Albert, is this Albert?” I was very puzzled because Albert had been at the party.

“It’s GREGOR!” he shouted in annoyance. I frowned at the phone.

“Oh, well, we are about to walk into a restaurant, can I call you later?”

“I guess,” sniffed Gregor, hanging up.

Stavros was already negotiating our seating with the Japanese hostess as I was replacing my phone in my bag and I saw with horror that she was trying to lead him into the Fume Room.

“UH—NO!” I shouted. They both turned around with stunned expressions.

“May we sit in here?” I gestured calmly to the sushi half of the restaurant.

The hostess nodded demurely and Stavros pivoted and followed without missing a beat.

Apart from the sushi chefs, we were the only people in the room. Those must have been their cars out front. What are they doing taking the choice parking places? I thought bitterly. We sat down and then I immediately got back up to go wash my hands. The music was quite loud in the ladies’ room and was the sort of soft rock normally found in chain discount stores.

There was also an AirWick© Plug-In™ Room Freshener in Apple Pie Spice™ scent that did not lend itself to the surroundings. The bathroom door (I decided to go since I was already in there) was also too close to the toilet and I felt very cramped in the stall. The motorized paper towel machine whirred eerily but nothing came out. I wiped my hands on my pants and went back to the table.

The waiter appeared at once and I ordered a glass of wine. Yes, I know I previously admitted to being hungover but what man among us can cast stones?

“What are you getting?” I demanded.

“The Bo-Bup Gog,” said Stavros, or something like this.

“Allright. I wonder if the udon is good here. Is the udon good here?” I said to the waiter impatiently.

He looked at me with an amused expression I took for insolence.

“Nevermind,” I said. “I’ll take the udon. Does that come with the sides? The little side dishes, the bowls of stuff? Or is that just with entrees? Can you get it with the udon? CAN YOU?!??!” I almost grabbed him by the collar.

“Yes, comes with sides,” he responded.

“Ok, that’s what I’ll have, only NO SHRIMP TEMPURA, got it? Vegetable. Can I get vegetable tempura instead?”

“Vegetable tempura, okay.”

“The Bul-Book Kon,” said Stavros, closing his menu and handing to the waiter.

I fooled around with my new phone for a few minutes and drank my wine.

“Remember when we came here that one time and you told me that story about your uncle, and the swords on the wall?” I asked my glassy-eyed mate.

“What? My uncle? What uncle?”

“Your uncle,” I said. “Something about a sword, there were swords on a wall somewhere.”

He looked baffled. The waited returned and set down six small bowls of pickled salads and gross fish cake slices. Also my udon, sans tempura anything. We started eating at once and the waiter left, then came back a moment later with Stavros’s Bul-Bik Gog, which turned out to be plain boiled beef slices with onions and one lettuce leaf.

My udon was sweet. There were bell pepper slices floating around and the broth was sick with their flavor. I added some kimchee and soy sauce and that helped somewhat.

“What about the tempura?” Stavros asked me.

“I don’t know, I’ll ask. Maybe he thought I didn’t want it at all?” I wondered aloud. “Excuse me!” I said to the waiter, who was lurking down at the end of the sushi bar and watching us.

“Um, I meant that HE will eat my shrimp tempura, not that I didn’t want it…” I lied, pointing at Stavros with my chopsticks. “We DO want that,” I added.
The waiter looked confused.

I looked at Stavros. I was confused, too. I couldn’t really remember what I’d tried to do about the tempura. Did I tell him I wanted the vegetable or that I wanted the shrimp and that I’d give it to Stavros? I read no answer in my beloved’s face.

“Uh…one moment,” the waiter said, and disappeared. Ten seconds later he was back.

“Vegetable is already cooking,” he said, “Cannot change. So sorry.”

“Oh. Okay. I guess I’ll just take the vegetable, then,” I said, looking at Stavros for any further clues. Finding none, I mumbled to the waiter’s back, “Do you think we can have some more kimchee?”

He returned with more kimchee and fled without a word. We ate in silence and kept waiting for the tempura. I didn’t want to ask again. I must have misunderstood something.

A waitress stopped at our table. “Is everything okay?” she asked.

I paused. I could bring up the tempura with her, a new person. I looked at Stavros, who had long since finished his beef and onions, and said, “Do you think we could have another bowl of kimchee?”

ROMEO PEACH FESTIVAL

I have been so busy for the past several weeks that I almost forgot to post about one of the most exciting events of the summer. I have a few moments now so allow me to share with you the tale of THE ROMEO PEACH FESTIVAL.

My dear friend Angelina Langoustine, who grew up in Romeo, graciously invited me and Stavros to join her at the festival and stay overnight at her parents’ house. She had invited me the previous year, too, but I declined, largely because Romeo seemed unknown and distant. But I have discovered that nearly anything can be endured with Stavros by my side, and in fact many otherwise horrible experiences are made fun by his presence alone, so I figured what the hell?

So one lovely Friday evening, we loaded up the car with provisions and headed north. The plan was to have a dinner party with a handful of other folks then hit the festival. So we brought a salad and some wine and Angelina was providing a big pasta dinner, and the other folks were bringing appetizers.

Romeo wasn’t nearly as far as I thought but the trip included one roundabout so it seemed like we had traveled a great and harrowing distance, which is all I ask for in a getaway. Exiting the freeway deposited us in the center of a very charming little town. There were people crowding every street corner and parents dragging children by the hands down sidewalks and old people eating hot dogs and teenagers shoving each other and tipsy-looking twenty-somethings everywhere you looked. We turned right at the main intersection, which was appropriately located at Main St and something else street, and drove slowly, looking left and right for the Langoustine family house.

I should mention that Starvos and I have similar family backgrounds. Our families are both middle-class working folks from east Detroit. We live modestly. Our parents live modestly. And we are neighbors with Angelina Langoustine, so imagine our surprise when we located the address and pulled up into the driveway of a house that looked like this:

“This explains a lot,” I commented to Stavros, referring to Angelina's surplus of belongings and expensive tastes.

“No shit,” he murmured, mouth hanging open as he took in the property.

Because I wished to appear familiar with this casually wealthy scenario, I headed straight for the back door, where I was sure the kitchen was located.

“Hullo!” I called, in what I hoped was a vaguely British upper-class tone. “We’re here!”

Angelina was at the stove in the vast kitchen, wearing an apron and stirring a pan of browning meat. There were bottles of wine and plates and napkins and silverware out and I could tell she’d been working all afternoon. She turned to greet us, a big smile on her face.

We put the bags down and she took us on a tour of the house. I do not exaggerate when I say that the house I grew up in could fit in their living room. The ceilings were 16 feet high. The floors were inlaid wood in geometric patterns. Stained-glass window panels hung in doorways. Multiple sets of stairs led up, down, zig-zagging into basements and attics. I couldn’t imagine what it must have been like growing up in such a house. Turns out I didn’t have to try very hard, because when Angelina led us to her old room, I noticed that both her and her sister’s room, where we were quartered, were virtual shrines to their teenaged selves.

We went back downstairs and people began arriving. Angelina’s anorexically-thin sister and her silent husband. Angelina’s friend the psychiatrist and her husband of 17 years. Mallory and Evan, a couple recently married. Alice and Mark, a boyfriend/girlfriend team who seemed to be experiencing some just-below-the-surface tension. It was a decent mix and everyone was in good spirits and we ate and drank wine and after peach pie and ice cream we walked the couple of blocks to the peach festival.

There was plenty to see on the street even though it was pretty dark. There was an overabundance of teenagers everywhere and they all looked identical. The girls wore way too much eyeliner and the shortest possible shorts with flip-flops. They were also uniformly bronze in a very unnatural way. The boys just looked like douches, the way teenaged boys everywhere look. We passed an old church that had been converted to a halfway house for the mentally impaired.

“Where are they halfway to?” asked Stavros to no one in particular.

Finally we reached the fairgrounds. To call the scene before us idyllic would be accurate, but there was something so alien about the cleanliness and wholesomeness of what we were seeing that Stavros and I both found it a little eerie. We were instantly separated from the rest of our group and began walking from attraction to attraction, trying to figure out how we’d spend our tickets.

First was the fun house, which really was fun. If you’ve never bumbled around a thirty-foot-long mirrored maze chasing a dozen drunks with corn-dog breath, you don’t know what you’re missing. We giggled and bumped our way out of there and headed over to the children’s roller-coaster. This is the sort of roller-coaster on which a new mother might feel secure placing her newborn; a smallish, low-altitude affair with minimal twists and turns. Nonetheless, Stavros and I screamed as if we were in a 747 plunging toward the Earth at a thousand miles an hour.

Next was the legendary Tilt-A-Whirl, a boring, jarring clunker of a ride that I suspect has only survived the festival circuit for so long because of its endearing name.

The best ride was the last one we rode before running out of tickets: Cliff Hanger. This is like that ride with the swings, only instead of swings, it’s got a board you lie on facedown and a bar that comes down to hold you on, so you’re sort of flying, or hang gliding, around in a circle. This was the pinnacle of our whole experience, this five-minute ride. Stavros was in the chair next to me to my right, and I was in the outside chair.

“STAVROS!” I yelled once we took off, and he looked over at me, laughing.

“WE’RE FLYING!” he yelled, and laughed some more.

Around and around we flew, swerving high and low over the faces of people on the ground waiting in line, seeing and hearing the whole fairground in a panorama of short-shorts and blinking lights and grinding gears and Taylor Swift and fallen flip-flops…finally the Cliff Hanger screeched to a stop and we staggered off. The carnies were all South African and mean. You said thanks to them and they looked at you like they wanted to rip your lungs out. We bowed courteously and scurried out the gate to find the rest of the gang in the beer tent.

Once inside the beer tent, I realized that we were in the midst of a giant all-year Romeo high school reunion. Thankfully everyone wanted to repair to a local saloon so we elbowed our way out and walked to a bar. It was during this segment of the evening that some of the couples in our group began to lose the ability to conceal their hostilities with one other, and Stavros and I decided to head back to the Langoustine house for the night.

We slept in Angelina’s sister’s room in twin beds we pushed together, and in the morning, went to a little diner for breakfast. The Romeo-ites were already out in full-blast festival mode so to cap off the trip, we took a quick stroll through the park hoping to catch the pie-eating contest. It was the first Saturday of the month, and so the tornado siren was going off. We had to shout to talk, and as we passed the petting zoo, I noticed all the animals were walking quickly around in a frenzied circle, heads bent low.

“They don’t like the siren!” I yelled to Stavros. “We gotta get out of here! This is freaking me out!”

Suddenly the eerily idyllic nature of the festival began to suggest only one thing to me and that one thing was David Lynch.

We hustled our asses back to the car and hugged Angelina goodbye and got the heck out of there.

It was probably the best night of the summer.

PS For those of you who think that the festival pictures above look a little seedy, it’s because they were actually taken at the Michigan State Fair, which is not in Romeo and is not at all idyllic, unless you grew up in Sarajevo.

CAFE MUSE-1, MEZZA-0

Couple of things: First, I am annoyed about something. While this is hardly news, I never said it was, so shut up. Here’s what I’m annoyed about. Several months ago on one of our trips to the afore-maligned Café Muse, Stavros and I noticed a new storefront on Royal Oak’s Fifth Street. It looked like it was going to be a fancy restaurant, and because it was called Mezza, I assumed it would be Italian.

Well, guess what, food-eaters? It’s not. It’s middle-eastern. Thank you so much. I can’t tell you how frustrating it’s been trying to find falafel in the state that has the largest Arabic community outside Iraq.

And if this discovery were not crushing enough, let us move on to the menu. The day we noticed Mezza had finally opened, a very nice lady spotted us peering at the menu posted in the window and rushed out to give us one. It’s been in my car for a couple of weeks and I’ve been using it to blot my lipstick. Today I was stuck at a red light for longer than the five seconds that I can tolerate having nothing to do and so I picked it up and glanced over the fare.

We’re finally at the thing I’m annoyed about: Dead center on the menu I see the header “PASTA.” Already I’m pissed—why do they have pasta? It’s Lebanese food! Then I read the brief description underneath and it turns out it’s one of those things where you can “create your own.” In fact, I think it actually says those despicable words, “Create Your Own Pasta!” (Say this with a sing-songy sneer.) The pasta shape is linguini. You can choose either marinara or cream sauce and then scallops, shrimp, or chicken. FOR $15.99! You’re not even paying for the expertise of a chef who’s mastered or even invented a recipe! It’s just some red sauce from a jar on ONE KIND OF PASTA ONLY that costs probably 50 cents a pound and then they throw a handful of chicken slices or shrimp that are worth about $2 and they have the nuts to charge $15.99 for that shit! In a Lebanese place! BURN IN HELL, MEZZA!

All right, now one quick other thing. Maybe you noticed I mentioned we were on our way to Café Muse. Okay, so maybe they had a couple of hiccups when they moved to the larger location. But I gotta admit, Stavros and I go there every weekend and we love it although I am still mad that they don’t have pickles. Call them cornichons, yo.


A few weeks ago on a spectacularly chilly and rainy morning, we were chatted up by one of the owners, David, whom you may recall commented here once in defense of his restaurant. David talks to us all the time, as do the rest of the staff, rather more than previously, in fact, and Stavros and I have considered that this could be a new policy. At any rate, on this particular rainy Saturday, David was preparing the table next to us in a rush and told us that his brother and cousin were in from out of town and would we please say nice things about him.

The brother and the cousin finally arrived, sat down, and were served the special beverage of the past few weeks, raspberry lemonade (which I think is $3—at Mezza, the plain, non-rasberried lemonade is FOUR DOLLARS) and got settled in. Stavros and I smiled at them with the special smugness of people who know the identities of others while their own remains unknown.

At once the cousin presented David with a gift—a painting she’d made just for him to hang in the restaurant. He unwrapped it and I of course craned my neck to see it. What I saw was about on par with a relative-created project any of us has received: a horror. Orange background with Jackson Pollacky swirls of gold puffy paint.

“Ohhhh!” exclaimed David.

“Ohhhh!” exclaimed I, immediately thereafter, as it was obvious I was staring. David’s eyes slid over mine, stopping for a split second to say, “Yes, I see that this is ghastly but she is my cousin” before skidding to a halt on her proud and smiling face.

“I know you like orange!” she beamed.

Well, Stavros and I really felt like one of the family after that. We practically hugged them all before stepping back out into the rain. I considered writing about this episode then but I was afraid David would remember the interaction and figure out who I am. I hope enough time has passed, but if not, David, please do not let on that you know. It’s much more fun this way. XO!

GUEST POST--SCOTIA STOP CHICKEN DINNER

This episode's guest post comes from Javier Wilhelm, local bon vivant.

Today I woke up and I knew that I wanted my lunch from a party store. I’ve been eating a lot of prepared food from party stores lately, with great success. Typical fare from these places is usually a couple varieties of pizza by the slice, fried chicken, sausages, hot sausages, ribs, and other food. Also potatoes.

A friend of mine tipped me off to the Scotia Stop recently, as they said it was a great little party store. I need a place to buy beer and cigarettes regularly and considering there have been no other local recommendations, I went to the Scotia Stop.

I drove there by car, and when I got there, I went in. I said “Hey!” to the cashier before he even had a chance to say hello to me. I told him, “I am here to get lunch,” and he confidently replied “Oh, we’ve got plenty of that.”

I went over to the “hot food counter” and looked at the food. The problem was that I couldn’t see the food! The glass was completely fogged up by the steaming hot food and various side dishes. The food bin attendant quickly wiped away the food fog, and I could finally see the food. Honestly, I wasn’t that excited, because I knew what to expect.

And I saw what I expected. There was fried chicken, fried chicken wings, and ribs. Then I noticed (what I believe sets Scotia Stop apart from the other party store I went to) is sides. And a combo meal. You can get macaroni mixed with cheese, as well as a cobbler portion of dessert food.

I said I wanted the Chicken Dinner Combo, for $5.99 please. I told him I wanted the macaroni side, instead of the dessert side, and he put it in the styrofoam carry-out tray.

They had three varieties of hot sauce; the man recommended the garlic hot sauce to me because “it is hotter.” I was disappointed to find that they didn’t have any solo cups for
the hot sauce, and that if they did, it would cost me a whole dollar. I decided to fill up my styrofoam carry out container with hot sauce, because everything is just going to get hot sauce on it anyway.

I also bought a 24oz. bottle of Beck’s Beer because that goes good with chicken.

I made it home in a matter of minutes. And upon my arrival, the chicken was at ambient temperature. Which is fine with me; I don’t need hot chicken, really. I was happy to see a large portion of the macaroni along side one half of a large potato; broasted. And also a very light biscuit. The biscuit, however, did not come with butter, so I dipped it in the macaroni and then into the hot sauce so it would have some liquid stuff on it.

The chicken breast was standard, but tasted good. I have always had a hard time getting breast meat off of a fried chicken breast. But that is my fault. Not their fault.

What I was most pleased with was the chicken wings. They are the kind of wings that are not separated into drumettes, wings, and chicken tips, but the kind that they leave all-together, in one piece. That is my favorite kind of chicken wing.

In conclusion, I am very full. I don’t feel sick at all, and that was a huge fucking potato. The men that work there are very pleasant, and I would go back for the wings.

STAVROS ON MAGARITA'S VIA ICHAT

STAVROS: I had some of the worst mexican food last night
EUNICE: where?
STAVROS: the place on wdwd in berkley
EUNICE: Margaritas's?
STAVROS: yeah, last night, after i left your house
EUNICE: oh...really, you went there? did you eat there? or get carry out
STAVROS: i got carry out
STAVROS: burritos
STAVROS: terrible
STAVROS: threw it out
EUNICE: what made you go there?
STAVROS: i wanted to go to Zumba
STAVROS: and they had *just closed
STAVROS: and so, i took 11 mile up to
STAVROS: worst mexican food ever
EUNICE: yes, i have never really seriously considered going there. it looks awful.
STAVROS: it was awful
STAVROS: had about 4 bites
STAVROS: man
STAVROS: threw it out
STAVROS: and i'll eat anything
STAVROS: the beef was grey
EUNICE: too bad you don't have a picture.
STAVROS: just take a picture of a trash can
STAVROS: surprised i'm not sick