SUNLIGHT, CRUST, AND CHOPSTICKS

What pulled in the customers, mostly cleancut younger Hong Kong Chinese desperate for a semblance of edible food, was the fact that it was a spacious dim sum restaurant, and looked remarkably clean and familiar. All the right decorations. Fu pasted on a wall. Scrollpainting of a horse. Lucky bamboo. Other potted plants. Red things. A small collection of familiar porcelain statues with wine cups before them, and a beckoning cat figurine.

What attracted the very few Caucasian customers was that there were condiments on the tables. Including the most miserable selection of hot sauces on the planet. The bottle that looked the most promising was encrusted with dried gloop from the top down. One table actually had Sriracha, which I snagged when the guest there was abstracted.

As I said: it was a very clean restaurant. Sparkling surfaces.
With thoroughly disgusting hot sauce bottles.

Somewhere in the Midwest.

Altogether a fairly nasty dream from which I'm glad I woke, but other than my plate of food which I had barely tasted I enjoyed being there. Nice crowd just as baffled as I was by the dissonance of location, strange attempts at familiar dishes, clean sparkling, and that large horrifying collection of smeared drippy crusted hot sauce bottles that the local truckstop would be proud to own.

As dreams go, it was quite baffling. Firstly, the chances of myself visiting an "inviting" restaurant for breakfast are extremely slim. My idea of waking up is a cup of strong coffee followed by a tromp around the neighborhood smoking my pipe and barking at dog walkers and joggers. No solids. Then a second cup of coffee while doomscrolling and cussing about Republicans and the most corrupt regime in Washington since President Grant.
And the chances of me ever being in the Midwest are less than zero.


Perhaps it was the allure of a familiar type of environment where both lutefisk and grits, or ghastly church suppers (I've heard about those no thank you) did not threaten anyone with gastric trauma. My idea of the vast centre is mounds of bland protein and hot grease with melted American cheese on everything, sometimes even the dining surfaces.
People saying "ya sure" and "pass the sugar, this food is too spicy".

There are good people there. Large pale pink good people.
Diabetes is their favourite spectator sport.
Jeepers Creepers.



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