Text 8254, 107 rader
Skriven 2013-12-26 12:21:00 av MICHAEL LOO (1:123/140)
Ärende: trip 649
================
Dan came over for a drink or two, and I convinced him to get
taken to lunch. He drove me to this peculiar storefront that
is the downstairs of a house - looks like they decided that
rooming houses didn't have enough cash turnover or something.
The Duboistown Cafe and Deli has maybe 5 four-tops with a
kitchen just behind. storeroom and restroom to the right, and
an overflow dining area beyond that. A homey place. I had tap
water; Dan had iced tea. That's the way you could tell who was
going to pay the bill. We both got cheeseburgers (as is common
these days, regular hamburgers aren't on the menu, you have to
ask for cheeseburgers hold the cheese), mine with bacon for an
extra 40c or so. You can get fries or cole slaw, but the special
side of the day was mac & cheese, and oddly we both got that.
We asked for the things medium rare.

The burgers were a good thick half pound, done somewhere between
well and incinerated. They'd been squished down terribly, so
the texture was resilient. The impression was of a McDonald's
burger on steroids. You got no extra advantage from the
additional 5 oz of meat. They were the impression of a luxurious
burger from the eyes of someone who had never had any but fast
food burgers, kind of sad. The mac and cheese was made with an
insufficient quantity of rather sharp Cheddar and was quite ok.
Dan tried to make out that this was the best in town, sort of
peculiar coming out of the mouth of a boy who has gone to Le
Bernardin every year for the last 30 years.

==

We were supposed to go to Franco's with our friend Jeannette, a
really hot young woman of about 45 who is getting a divorce owing
to her husband taking off with the town tramp (really lurid
stories about her). OK, fine, Annie has, bless her, has always
tried to put me in proximity with her pretty friends who all share
certain traits - blonde, much younger than me, slightly overweight
but sensitive about this (Syd is the exception, but she's anorexic
having been slightly overweight before), and digging gold like
crazy. 

I poked around the reviews on the Internet so as to be prepared
for the experience and found this gem on Trip Advisor:

  The "pork belly" I was told after it was served was
  full of FAT FAT & more white FAT. Got sick to my
  stomach with the thought of all that fat.

One of those "hello, anybody home" reviews that Yelp and Trip
Advisor are so full of.

I was heartbroken to find that there isn't pork belly on the
menu after all ... perhaps it had been one of the specials,
or perhaps the reviewer was just making it all up.

So Jeannette shows up, and guess what, there's company, her
granddaughter Lily who doesn't care for me and tries to hide
under the table on seeing me. No biggie. Jeannette's kid was
an oops and has no official father (the real one has, bless
his heart, continued to provide support despite its being a
one-nighter); the granddaughter is an oops with no father in
sight, and Jeannette was a granny at 40, perhaps the hottest
one I've ever been acquainted with. Okay.

The kid is said to be pretty good in adult situations, so
that's not too bad but that she doesn't like me so kept
running under the waitresses' skirts and so on, disrupting
the meal.

We had the calamari appetizer, very crunchy, lots of tentacles,
quite decent, which came with a ramekin of the place's famous
marinara, which as far as I can tell could have come from a
Prego jar; also an order of garlic bread, which is nice and
garlicky but has tons of mozz melted over it - not for me, but
Lily eats cheese as if there were no tomorrow, so that's fine.

Annie always gets "homemades," essentially spaghetti alla
chitarra, with white clam sauce or garlic, shrimp, and
scallops. This time she got the latter. I had a sample:
the shellfish were rather like my preparation, the pasta
pretty much what I'd make only gummy and not as good.

I ordered an appetizer portion of fried shrimp (4), scallops
(4), and calamari (about half the calamari appetizer). These
were perfectly okay, the shrimp Gulfs but nicely frozen and
thawed, fairly sweet, and pretty big, the scallops seas but
probably domestic, and what does one expect in a central
Pennsylvania town.

Lily got spaghetti with meatballs and marinara, of which she
ate half, as they sent out an adult portion. This is not on
the menu - you pay your $14 or so for spaghetti marinara and
an extra $3 for each meatball.

Jeannette had the appetizer portion of tamari shrimp, a
peculiar thing to eat in an Italian restaurant, but she's
trying to lose weight (apparently her husband left her for the
town skank because he thinks she's obese, which she is not,
just a little pleasantly plump, maybe a size 12).

Beers for me and Annie; a Shirley Temple for Lily, and plain
water for Jeannette. Annie had a gift cert for $50; I made up
the difference, a little over that, with my credit card. No
dessert, though Franco or whatever his name is is a friend of
Jeannette's and offered on the house.

___ Blue Wave/386 v2.30
--- Platinum Xpress/Win/WINServer v3.0pr5
 * Origin: Fidonet Since 1991 Join Us: www.DocsPlace.org (1:123/140)