December 5
Middle aged guys talking on their cellphones at the tables. What a fucking horror. I gotta get out of here. My cholesterol levels are up anyway. More filet and lobster tails.
This Francis Ford Coppola cabernet is surprisingly insipid. I mean, you figure the guy is a perfectionist, right? But maybe I’m an idiot? Yes, that’s probably it.
This meat is RARE. Shocking, really, that a chain restaurant would serve such undercooked meat. The dark lighting is meant to cover up mistakes. The darker the place the crappier the kitchen.
This guy’s still talking loudly on his cellphone. Like a fucking bully. Sitting there with his wife and kids, who dutifully soldier on with the bread, too afraid to say anything.
Pieces of the tenderloin dunked in drawn butter. Everything on my plate went cold five minutes after it arrived. That’s the microwave talking to you. Damn you Francis Ford Coppola! You’ve made this crappy meal even crappier! At $10 a pop! Bastard, how dare you!
People flashing cameras. What an unholy abomination. Who are these barbarians?
January 17
Business guys across the room talking corporate talk. Real estate, equity, insurance etc. Hockey mom next to me on her cellphone. Welcome to CT.
Me, I’m the solitary freak with a glass of French Bordeaux on the table. Steer wiiiiiide.
Kobe beef burger: $19. Worth it? A resounding NO. Though it is decent enough.
Big guffaws from corporate-guy table. Usually this place is full of women lunching. Why can’t I fit in? Then again who cares? I sit in restaurants by myself too much. My regular waiter at —- reacted with unabashed surprise when I told him I was bringing in a party of five. I imagine AR has never gone to a restaurant by herself in her entire life. To do so would be an embarrassment, an admittance of social failure. And maybe it is, so what? You ask me it’s society that has failed. Society is just not that interesting, on the whole. To me anyway.
Time to go. Stayed over an hour. Long-ish for me. Off to library, then VM, then SW. Then home. Where the heart is.
February 6
Reading David Chang’s “Momofuku” about his improbable rise as a famous chef. Good reading. Another lunatic obsessive. Gotta love those types.
Licorice is kind of a 19th Century flavor, isn’t it? The Pernod in the mussel broth. I dig it, though I usually dislike licorice flavor. No one really uses it anymore, do they? Who even eats licorice anymore except “red” licorice which isn’t licorice at all?
Pretty soon I’m off. Feet walking. That would be something said in New Orleans. Vernacular: “I’m feet walking!” So obvious and unneeded but funny anyway and in New Orleans funny is always the way to go. “I wouldn’t do that, me!” Well, who else?
March 6
There is a surfeit of four year old boys in this joint. What’s up with that?
I suddenly wish I was in San Francisco. My mind bends constantly. But San Francisco isn’t the San Francisco I knew anymore. Even New Orleans is totally changed since last I was there. I don’t belong in these places anymore (if I ever did belong).
I think single people disturb these families all around me, they have so much yakkity-yak and gobbledy-gook jabbering at each other. A silent lone person disturbs that scene. Like, what’s his problem?
Jesus, the most HOMELY woman you ever saw just delivered my food! It has negatively affected my sense of taste! Holy shit!
The scallops, while tasty, are horrendously overcooked. Drenched in compound butter to make you forget.
All four year old boys! It’s weird. All blonde kids. Right out of “Village of the Damned.” People keep surging through the door. One of the little blonde kids wears an old DEF LEPPARD t-shirt. What the fuck? Is it 1983?
San Francisco. My mind reels.
March 12
What the hell is a “brodo”? Lobster brodo. Parmesan brodo. Some made up shit to sound fancy.
Sitting in half light [power outages in the midst of a heavy storm]. In New Orleans people would make a day of this, bar hopping from dark bar to dark bar.
With a brodo.
“My grandmother’s dead. She’s in Heaven.” Overheard.
Some corporate guy nearby with a woman, maybe his wife. He talks like a bloodsucker. Everything is “product” to this guy.
“When I get blowback what am I gonna do…I gotta do…I mean…he hired him…what am I gonna do?…I like him, he’s no schmuck…half an hour…don’t ask me questions about trading…”
March 23
Me, I’m stodgy. What do I care for the 21st century? Not much. Who are the big writers? Dave Eggers? I mean “literary” writers. Jonathon Safron Foer? These guys hang out in Brooklyn. Brooklyn! They are enamored of immigrant stories. Spare me. These guys have never starved in a cheap small room somewhere going out of their minds. Not that there’s any nobility in that but c’mon, at least pretend to have suffered a little. These guys are all way too comfortable with themselves. Where’s Dostoevsky when you need his crazy ass?
May 17
Some local mother and her teenage son are the only other diners in the place. Very quiet while the café next door is hopping. Not sure what that says.
My extremities seem to have floated away from me. A long-stemmed glass is too much to handle. The pen in my hand retains its relative equanimity. Always a writer, eh?
The mom is nattering away loudly on her cellphone. Nice example for her son. Stupid bitch.
Chicken eggrolls (unremarkable) with mango dipping sauce (even more unremarkable). Will I go for an order of Kobe beef sliders? Yes, I believe I will. Strength!
KN didn’t know what a masochist was. How do you go through life without knowing something like that? Wasn’t everybody looking up all the dirty words back when they were horny young teenagers? I know I was. And plenty of other stuff too. I thought everybody was doing it but I was wrong. Like writing stories: doesn’t every kid do that? Well, no.
The waitress is filling in the mom about her personal life. The mom is pressing her for every sordid detail. Is this appropriate? Am I just an asshole? Do I need to hear about the waitress’ back surgery? How she shouldn’t have any more children or her uterus will fall out? What her relationship is with her baby daddy? Her landlord issues? Her weight issues?
It…is….excruciating.
“That I might have scar tissue? Like, they find a nerve and destroy it?”
You see, everything ends in a question mark? Like, yeah?
I’m beginning to regret ordering those sliders. Where are they anyway? Get em out here and put an end to my misery! Oh my god it’s unbelievable! There’s no one else here to save me! I’m trapped with these poisonous idiots!
“Like…like…like…like….like?”
Please shut the fuck up.
“I feel like I’m 80 and I’m, like, 30?”
The mom is abetting this torture, constantly asking for more details. Wealthy CT nitwit!
Have I mentioned I hate CT?
Where are my fucking burgers?
“Scar tissue and, like, skin grafts? That’s like $5000? I can’t afford that? That’s cosmetic?”
Oh, the humanity!
How much worse can it get? WHERE’S MY FUCKING BURGERS? YOU MOTHERFUCKERS ARE MURDERING ME!
I’m sitting here, a defeated man, forced to listen to this woman talking about toilet tissue and “feminine napkins” clogging up her toilet.
This…is…absolutely…brutal…
