What is your favorite restaurant?
I know for sure there are some restaurants I greatly dislike. And, more often than not, it’s because of a bad interpersonal experience versus a bad meal. Now, as for my favorite restaurant, there is more than one. It’s many. I love all cuisines. I love hole in the wall restaurants. I like some fancy ones.
The restaurants I return to repeatedly are those where I feel like I’m in the set of the television show Cheers. I like it when people know my name and they’re always glad I came. I wanna be where I can see that all our troubles are all the same.
Sadly, because of all my medical appointments, work meetings, and the like, I have not frequented my old haunts much these days. That makes me a bit sad. I tried repeatedly going to a couple of new restaurants in my new neighborhood, but I haven’t felt that Cheers vibe. There is truly something about going to a place that knows how to make my own special rum punch. Or a place that, even though it’s not on the menu, will make me a most-delicious mushroom risotto. There’s something about going somewhere. I get to ask the bartender about her mom, and she asks about my son.
Comfort. Comfort food comes is served in many different ways. And, that is good for one’s mental health.
Categories: Culture, food, identity, mental health, Pop Culture, Psychology, society
psychologistmimi 
Oh Dear Lord Miriam How my Peers From School And
The Money Making Paternal Part of my Family ‘Thought’
i Was Wasting my Life Playing the Role of ‘Ted Danson’
Behind the Counter at A Military Bowling Center Listening to the
Life Stories of Perhaps A Hundred Thousand Folks over the course of
18 Years Internationally Through the Military and The General Public that
Got a Pass to Use the Place Over So Many Years Anyway ‘Those Folks’ ‘Thought’
i Should Be Fulfilling my
Human Potentials in a
Different Way and Ways Than
Lifting Other Humans Up in Ways
of Warm Human Connections Which
of Course The One Who Gives Receives the
Most As This Is Human Nature not the Competition
to Buy Stuff That Humans Are Spoon Fed From Birth
Or Become Someone Other Than Human For Real Well
True i Lost That Through 5 Job Changes Behind a Screen
Moving Up the Ladder of Administrating And Department Head
Meetings With Military Officials Like Captains of Installations
Through 5 Temporary Promotions Yet at the End When it
Burnt me All Out i Remember Sitting in my Back Yard
Just Wishing i Could Go Back at A Such a Low Wage
Just to Serve Others in A Warm Way of Humanity
Every Day in the Life of me Like i Used to then
And When i Did it Then i Always felt it’s Sad
i Have to Get Paid to Make a Living
To Make Others Happy And Now
That i No Longer Have To Get Paid
It Doesn’t Matter Where We Go We
Are Fully Human Now And It’s True Most Everywhere
We Go People Are Waiting For Us to Call them By Their
Name and Lift Them Up Again i Don’t Have A ‘Name’
i Was the Bowling Alley Guy Before And The Dancing
Guy Now And That’s Enough When Life is Warm and
No Longer
Cold
and
Void Within…
i Find the Warmest
Most Human Waitresses
At the iHop Breakfast ‘Club’ Hehe
Down to Earth And Not too Important to
Greet Everyone as Human And Still Truly Warm…
i Find it Fairly Easy to Lift Folks Up All it takes is A HeART
That’s Warm…
Keeping
The Flame
KinDLeD
Every Day
iN A Life Without Fail…
So Hard to Do When Humans
Play Basically Roles of Machines Most Every Day…
iNDeeD A Golden Age Any Age Still Warm True ToGeTHeR…
A Communion SPiRiT
Of Souls Still Beating..:)
LikeLike
Mimi, You have more variety in a place like New York. Where I live, the choices are fewer and my favorite restaurants have changed hands, gone out of business, or the quality of food or service has gone downhill.
Also, the mix of clientele has changed or evaporated since the Covid thing started.
I no longer have a favorite place but wish I didn’t have to do all my own food preparation. I’ve probably lost weight for lack of time, energy, or interest in even my own best cuisine.
LikeLike
I live in a retirement community with ONE choice: their restaurants for dinner or lunch.
The pandemic and subsequent labor shortage has made it even worse. When we came here five years ago the food for adequate to good – but residents here longer already wished for past glories.
I’m a picky eater – part of MY problem – and try to eat a low-carb diet because that works best for writing with my damaged brain. This is becoming ridiculously difficult. I no longer eat to enjoy, but only to live. It wouldn’t happen – if they didn’t meddle with every single offering. The Chicken Parmesan I had been looking forward to for a WEEK, and which had all the right ingredients (so it wasn’t a failure of anything but imagination) was horrid. They insist on pouring brown/tan gloopy gravy on everything, and I could landscape a mansion with the amount of random green stuff they top everything with, and which I have to first remove. Their attempts at Chinese dishes included Cashew Chicken with no cashews and as a field of tiny random unidentifiable and certainly not coated and deep fried chicken bits, no sauce.
I’m glad my husband isn’t horridly picky – and that the kids learned from him.
But I have given up.
Glad you enjoy the variety you have access to!
LikeLike
Oh my. No. Cashew chicken with no cashews?!!
LikeLike
And Chicken Tikka Masala that was orangish, no nan – not at all like the restaurants in New Jersey. Husband uses these things as starter ingredients, adds more of all kinds of things, likes his concoctions – I can’t eat them.
I hope their next dining iteration in June (promised for long ago) is better.
I’m not starving – don’t worry. I just hate knowing what it costs, and wondering why the heck everything tastes of cilantro (I think I have the ‘cilantro tastes like soap’ gene) and some red spice they seem to put on everything.
We get plain roasted chicken breast from the grocery store, and I have chicken salads and sandwiches and quesadillas and soups – but it isn’t ideal.
Just envying you authenticity and variety.
LikeLike
Too much cilantro is not a good thing
LikeLike
We were at dinner with friends tonight – three out of four of us hate cilantro. I suspect the main chef is from someplace where it is ubiquitous.
Oh, well.
LikeLike