Sniffed Back To Reality
I had 24 hours in San Francisco last week, and I did many excellent things. First, I gave a reading at Amnesia in the Mission, which was my ostensible reason for visiting town. Second, I went to see DJ Cheb i Sabbah spin. I've been listening to DJ Cheb for more than a decade, since an Indian friend (with a taste for dub mixes done by Algerian Jews) introduced him to me. Now everyone and his cousin Lou throws banhgra nights at their club, but Cheb still does it better than anyone else, and also, it's not like I go out, ever, when I'm at home.
So I went to the Bollyhood Café, by myself, since I no longer have any friends in San Francisco who stay up past 11 on a weeknight. I was, as always, a little stoned, so the music got into my bones a bit and I swayed around the dance floor. The crowd was small, but almost absurdly diverse. Why were there so many Palestinians in the room? My fun lasted for about an hour, until I realized that I was a lonely middle-aged man at a nightclub by himself, so I went back to my hotel room.
The highlight of my visit was, as always, the food. I had an even better run than usual in SF this time. I was staying near Union Square, and arrived at an off-hour. There's no better place to eat at 3 PM on Thursday afternoon than Katana-Ya , which makes the best bowl of rich-broth ramen in the Bay Area.
I could get a bowl equally as good at a dozen places in L.A., but all would require at least 25 minutes in the car. This was a five-minute walk, and I filled my belly with warm soup and slivers of tender roast pork and I was happy.
This held me just fine until about 9 PM, when hunger struck again. Fortunately, I was just down the street from Dosa, where you can never go wrong on a chilly night, especially not if you're having a bowl of Rasam "fire broth" soup and a dosa full of spicy Mysore-style lentil chutney. There was also warm chai tea, and my stomach was stimulated, perhaps over-stimulated. Fortunately for humanity, I didn't have to share my hotel room.
I woke up at 10 AM, alone, with no children to be found anywhere. I can't say that I was exactly hungry, but I didn't have a flight until 2:30, and, really, why waste hours in San Francisco not eating? So I took a solid 20-minute walk through the Tenderloin, passed Grass Roots, my favorite mid-city medical-marijuana dispensary, and got to Brenda's French Soul Food in time to get my name on the list before the lunch rush.
Once I got seated at the counter, I ordered a bowl of fresh fruit and an iced tea, but those were merely to serve as buffers for one of the finest things I've ever consumed: A plate of three sinful crawfish beignets, covered with a thick dusting of cayenne. It was a savory undersea donut volcano, and I left the Bay Area satisfied.
My good run continued back in L.A. On Saturday evening, at 5 PM exactly, Regina, Elijah and I sat down at Din Tai Fung in Alhabmra, and prepared to tuck in for some dumpling goodness. There are probably better dumpling places in L.A., and almost certainly cheaper ones, but Din Tai Fung has been doing it right for a long time. None of us complained when we put juicy pork-and-crab dumplings on our soup spoons, when the dumplings exploded soupy goodness into our mouths, or when we followed that up with a shumai fresh enough to qualify as evil. The family practically beamed with happiness as we walked into the parking lot.
Then, this morning, I sniffed back into reality, when I dragged my ass out of bed at 8 AM to get my cup of tea. Regina was making the boy's lunch. She stuck a small blue plastic container under my nose.
"Does this smell good to you?"
No, it didn't. I smelled like rancid meat.
"Bleargh!" I said. "What is that?"
"I was going to give him ham for lunch."
"You can't. Why did you have me smell that?"
"I wasn't sure," she said. "Would you smell the soy milk, too?"
"No," I said. "You smell the soy milk, goddammit."
"I smell daddy's butt," Elijah said.
I was definitely awake.
