feather2pixels

Since the beginning of the fall I’ve been bringing food to work.  I have never been able to do this before and I have no explanation as to why the O.C.D. is taking hold so late in life.  But five days a week this has been my lunch:

So it was that last week was a special treat.  I am not gonna gloat, but I’m coming off an unbelievable five days of eating with my friends. The undeniable highlight was Brothers restaurant, in the Korean BBQ district of San Francisco.  We got the meal for four, which yielded 38 plates, 3 pounds of meat and 1 hot-coal grill and the recommended Korean daily serving of approximately twenty thousand grams of sodium.

This is where I spent the weekend. Thank god for Mile Rock Beach.

And thank god for this sandwich.

If you live in San Francisco and agree that a good sandwich is notoriously hard to find, then I strongly recommend making a trip to the nondescript corner store at 17th and South Van Ness for the purposes of ordering “The Triple Decker,” pictured here. Since the beginning of the year, this place has been under the watch of a kindly man who has recently retired from a storied career in high profile catering. Vegas. The movies. That kind of thing.  Needless to say, given some time to kill, a man like this will do the job right and for the right reasons. In addition to this beast, which, amazingly costs a mere six dollars, one can order “The Kitchen Sink,” which costs over five hundred dollars and requires some advance notice. For an additional fee that elevates the cost to well over one thousand, this sandwich will include a kitchen sink. Not really sure if that is a joke, but I kind of think it isn’t.

This week I returned from a trip home–or whatever Blue Bell is to me. Do I have a home? What does that even mean? Is home just one of the many fictions I have invented to deal with myself? Argh! I have been desperately trying to claw out of my imaginary worlds; you would think a trip back East would provide some much needed clarity.

But at least it was an efficient trip. In four days and five nights I was able to do everything I wanted to do without down time. Time is sanity at home. More importantly, I was able to eat (almost) everything I was hoping to eat. Plus, I got to fulfill my lifelong dream of experiencing live reggae in Blue Bell. It did not disappoint.

That particular excursion happened to be the first time I have drank (Yuengling, none the less) legally with Danny, as he reached the end of his twenty-first year last January. From now on, the powers that be will have to think of a better reason to kick us out of Slim’s. The entire family, which, more and more is starting to resemble a bona fide clan, also made it down to Philly Chinatown, where I sampled the worst carrot juice and the best wonton soup of my life in the same meal.

OK, so there was a little clarity.

On Saturday, the clan traveled to a barbecue near the nuclear power plant, where tomatoes apparently grow to the size of dodge balls. Those were enjoyed with burgers and bottled water on the lovely little ranch of my dad’s longtime lab manager, Marella. Danny, Michelle & Andy (Mandy?), and I got a casual game of whiffle ball/frisbee/tennis/football (fiffle ball?) going and that was really the main event.

That nigt, Joe was cast into the final weeks of his bachelorhood with a party designed to, um, be like, the opposite of a wedding? Or something. I guess I don’t really understand bachelor parties. Maybe this mental block is linked to why I will be the last of my friends to get married. But, as with the family, everyone was together for the first time in a while, and that was good. I’ve got good friends. Plus, Shal and I got scrapple–that’s good too. Especially in a crowded diner at 2AM.

The next day I had probably the best pastrami half sandwich of my life. I use the term sandwich loosely to describe what was more of a small mountain of freshly carved, hot meat, dripping with pastrami goodness between slices of bread. The Rascal, sitting across from me in a busy corner of the Reading Terminal Market, ate the other half, which was slathered with an ill-advised layer of mustard. Not only did she decline my mustard advice, but that girl still insists I love mustard, which is like saying that Donkey Kong loves short Italian plumbers. Just because I once ate half a jar of it rather than risking certain starvation strikes me as irrelevant. Irrelevant!
Speaking of advice, some of the too hip for their own good SF coffee shops could learn something from the quiet dignity of La Colombe at Rittenhouse Square.

Finally: cheesesteaks and baby cows. It was a surprisingly good combination, the cheesesteaks in question coming from Palermo’s in Blue Bell (because at the time it was not one of Pudge’s four hours of operation) and the baby cows from Merrymead Farms, where one can watch really cute feedings in the early evening, complete with oversized baby bottles.