Scenes from a fast casual Italian restaurant (Human Pursuits 5/2/22)
Eating out to stave off idleness
VANCOUVER – It was a little after 8 o’clock when I stepped off the cold cobblestone streets and into the dim warm light of the restaurant waiting area. Leah had met up with a friend at the Magnet for drinks, but they didn’t eat. She texted and suggested we meet up for dinner, and even though I had already had a big plate of leftover salad, I thought it sounded like fun, so I drove over the bridge to meet her.
The hostess seemed annoyed as I walked past the antique doctor’s scale next to the door and the small group of teenagers who had yet to be seated. “I’m just here to meet someone,” I explained, as I flashed my vaccine card and I.D. Leah’s hair caught the light as I slid into the booth. “How’s your son?” she asked “Did he get fed?” Outside a siren screamed down Water Street. “Stu’s good,” I replied “We played and I fed him dinner.”
Leah cut the complimentary bread in half and we both knifed a small bit of whipped butter onto our plates to smear it with. As we snacked, I pulled out my cell phone and scanned the QR code to look at the menu, which still feels rude even though I know, given the circumstances, it isn’t. “Maybe I’ll get the spaghetti and meatballs,” I mused. “I’m getting the lasagna,” said Leah.
A couple seconds later, our teen waitress strode over and asked if we were ready to order. For the lady: lasagna. Green salad with balsamic dressing. Water to drink. I ordered the same, except with Diet Coke and a lemon wedge.
As we waited for the food, I told Leah about this story I had seen on the news, but that we had actually learned about a few days earlier on TikTok. A woman had gotten into her car, and found a man lying naked in the backseat. “That was in Nanaimo,” I explained. Leah asked me what happened and I said “I don’t know, I only saw the headline.” She found the story online. The woman had called the police, and the man was apparently taken to hospital. The journalist hadn’t been able to reach the woman who took the video.
Across the restaurant, a teenager and her family were seated at a big, dark wooden table, celebrating her sweet sixteenth. A nearby TV illuminated the balloons around her head and shoulders. Gordie Howe ducked and weaved his way around defenders at a somewhat death defying speed, considering he wasn’t wearing a helmet. The waitress came and dropped off our salads. Behind the family, an old haunted rail car sat motionless next to a Texaco gas pump.
Lately, when people ask me what I’ve been up to, I don’t know what to tell them. “We maybe get to a restaurant,” I say, which is incredibly lame but also incredibly true and incredibly needed, as the languishing of the last few years has morphed into idling. Into gently humming along while simultaneously getting nowhere.
Decades ago, a Japanese Buddhist monk named Kenko wrote that “Going on a journey, whatever the destination, makes you feel suddenly awake and alive to everything… There are so many new things to see in rustic places and country villages as you wander about looking… You even notice the fine quality of things you’ve brought with you, and someone’s artistic talents or beauty will delight you more than they usually would.” As we eat our lasagna, I wonder if journeys from lower Shaugnessy to Gastown still count.
Unlike other contemporary dining concepts, this place, with its antique decor, multi-coloured booths and stained glass fixtures is akin to travelling back in time, to being smothered in the cheesy embrace of nostalgia. Sweet sixteen, made with cane sugar. No artificial sweeteners or preservatives. The real deal, full stop.
In his writing, Kenko reflected on the ache of nostalgia. He wrote about finding papers from people long dead, or even those still living, and how moving it could be to “ponder when and in what year you received it.How melancholy to think that your own familiar things, too, will remain in existence down the years to come, indifferent and unchanged.”
As we waited for the plates to be cleared Leah asked if I saw everything that happened with Kim and Kanye. “God,” I said “What an idiot.”
We found an Evo two minutes from the restaurant, after we settled the bill. I opened the car and connected my phone to the Bluetooth. I put on Billy Joel. Scenes from an Italian Restaurant poured out of the speakers as we drove into the inky Friday night.
I'll meet you any time you want
In our Italian Restaurant
Leah laughed. “I guess the Old Spaghetti Factory is an Italian restaurant.”
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