Breakfast in Chi Town

This morning we made our way to Pauline's restaurant in Chicago's Ravenwood neighborhood on the Northside. It took two tries of inquiring with locals to get us somewhere we could have eggs without having to unload and cook in the van on the streets of Chicago, among the blocks of brick houses and tall, overhanging trees. The food was mediocre (Adam said afterward they must be in the Slow "crappy" Food movement), but the scene was a constant source of entertainment. Two families sat together, two feet from us. A couple sat next to us in the other direction. We just sat and listened and watched as our food twiddled its thumbs in the kitchen. I'd like to write it all out like a story, but I'm not sure how to do that. So, I'll just write what I remember - snippets of conversation.

"I want a chocolate chip pancake!" yelled the precocious blond boy at the end of the table.
"I want one too!" yelled the brown-haired boy who couldn't keep still in his chair.
"I don't WANT a huge meal!" yelled a third boy.
"I know what we could do while we wait for our food!" said the only girl at the table, her small mouth and freckles poised in an adorably expectant expression. "We could play..." and here she named some game I've never heard of. And of course I thought of how I never tired of "I'm thinking of animal," from age 6 to puberty. At restaurants I invariably thought of it and my mom humored me even when she didn't feel like guessing the obscure name of some creature I had just read about in Ranger Rick magazine.
"Let's all sit quietly," said the clean-shaven father with rimless glasses and a trim brown haircut.

The boy closest to us dropped his silverware and looked down at it on the cement patio where we all sat, crammed in so close the waitresses had to turn sideways to get by. He made no move to retrieve it, but sat looking chagrinned. The fair bear at Adam's elbow offered the boy his flatware set, wrapped in a paper napkin and taped tightly in green. The boy looked at him in alarm and did not accept. Adam chuckled saying, "Don't take knives from strangers!" The man didn't get the joke and explained, sounding a little hurt at being called a stranger, "Well, he dropped his knife..." At this point the mother of the young girl was saying something in an apologetic tone about having plenty of spare silverware at their table. "I know, I was joking," said Adam jovially to the knife profferer, suddenly remembering his last awkward experience of trying to make light with a Midwesterner a few years ago.

Our chai finally arrived, surprisingly with whipped cream piled on top. We both scraped it off onto our saucers and discovered bland, barely infused tepid water underneath. I added back all my whipped cream and mixed it in to get some milky flavor. It hardly hit the spot, but my body responded to the motions.

The families' food arrived and everyone's eyes popped at the size of the pancake platters. I read Pauline's tag line above us, "Where quality and quantity meet." I hoped they were right about the quality part. So much for the kid who didn't want a huge meal.

Our omelets arrived about a month later and we dug in, less enthusiastic, hungry though we were, as we discovered the claim to be only half true. Adam commented that raisins got their own distinct, cool name, so why were sun dried tomatoes left with such a mundane description for a name? That's exactly the kind of story I would go searching for and give up after an hour and a half of googling. So, if anyone knows the story, you know whom to tell.

As the food didn't hold our attention, we kept our eyes and ears on the goings on of the neighborhood. Gay couples in shorts and shirtsleeves, women fresh from their morning exercise in clinging clothes, mothers and fathers with gaggles of scrawny kids, jaunted through the doors at all intervals. A tall man with the palest brown skin walked by hurriedly every 5 minutes, each time offering us coffee, not seeing the tea bags in our mugs. The family seated near us ploughed their way through pancakes as big as birthday cakes. "I don't want to finish my pancakes cause I wanna save room for toast!" yelled the precocious one, who went on to explain that he had never actually tasted the middle school food but had heard it was quite excellent, particularly the pizza. His brother (or his friend?) listed off all the foods you can eat everyday at school in a loud voice, "You can have sandwiches every day, you can have pizza everyday, burgers, hotdogs..." he counted them off on his fingers pointedly. The precocious one took a moment to transfer his mound of pancake crumbs to his sister, who stood up on her chair to cup them in her hands and plunk them onto her plate. The couple on our other side discussed at length the meal they had had last night, how the food was not that remarkable, but the company and ambiance were lovely, asking after each other's enjoyment of their dining experience. They both weighed at least 250 each, and without hearing them speak I would have opted not to run into them in a dark alley. I love being surprised with gentleness wrapped in stereotypically gruff packaging.

I normally walk away from a run of the mill meal disillusioned and depressed - I've been known to look forward to especially promising meals for a week (or longer if you count the hors d'oerves at our wedding). But the cultural experience of this meal eclipsed the blunt fact of bad food. And for that, I am glad.