• 596 next day with friends

    From MICHAEL LOO@1:123/140 to ALL on Friday, June 28, 2019 02:26:54
    The Hampton breakfast room was packed - they lower
    the rates at business district hotels on weekends, and
    it seems they may have lowered them a bit much -, and
    we had to wait for a deuce to open up, which it did
    pretty soon, because the food, though abundant and
    mostly wholesome, did not encourage lingering. I got
    sausage, the usual links and tots (shrivelled, hard,
    somewhat nasty), and tried to make up the spaces with
    a hard-boiled egg, which was totally tasteless and with
    a weird texture I'd never encountered before, somewhat
    like what I'd think cold vomited-up pudding would be
    like; Lilli said that she never saw me struggle so hard
    to eat anything nor have such a look of mixed puzzlement
    and disgust on my face. I grabbed Lilli's discarded
    watery oatmeal and chugged it down to wash the stuff
    out of my mouth. It was lucky we had made plans to
    meet our friends at the fairly new DeKalb market hall
    in Brooklyn, a 15-minute subway ride away.

    We got there at the appointed time to find only our
    longtime associate from San Francisco Kathy there, the
    rest being delayed by something or another; so we hit the
    ground running and started foraging for sustenance. We
    wandered the food hall, which was less amazing than the
    media give it credit for being, scoped out likely candidates,
    and set ourselves up right in front of Katz's the better to
    be noticed when the others arrived. I went forth in search of
    grub for the table.

    The first place that had struck our fancy was called the
    Paella Shack, but it was selling all sorts of other things,
    and I picked up some empanadas - beef criollo, because
    everybody likes beef, and so-described pork belly, because I
    like pork belly. Both kinds were pretty good though costly,
    and not what I'd have expected at all. The beef was reasonably
    seasoned picadillo meat (I didn't tell Lilli that it had olives
    in it, because she hates olives, and there weren't that many);
    the pork belly was merely ordinary ground pork in a sweetish
    sauce - not nearly fatty enough (I admit it takes a certain
    sort of palate to appreciate ground pork belly, which this was
    clearly not - more like shoulder, and lean shoulder at that)
    and rather sweet, almost as if it were Peking noodle sauce,
    Spanish hot chocolate was very good, chocolaty, fairly creamy,
    a little spicy with cinnamon and chile, the star of the meal.

    Fletcher's, an offshoot of a renowned New Jersey
    barbecuery, was nearby, and I tried to negotiate for a
    redeemingly fatty order - a moist brisket sandwich and
    some rib tips. The glum counter man showed me a piece
    of sort of lean brisket and told me that this is how
    it comes, and his supervisor, or at least someone a
    bit more articulate, said that the rib tips wouldn't
    be coming out for another fifteen minutes, claiming
    the (rather overpriced) ribs were the same. I pointed
    out that I was providing tastes for a bunch of people,
    and even ones who knew each other as well as we do might
    be put off by gnawing on a half a used rib. She sort
    of understood, I think. So Lilli wandered by during these
    delicate negotiations and urgently requested a brisket
    sandwich, so I ordered one for her and was pleased to see
    the counterman apparently trying to find a little fat for
    her sandwich. But disaster of disasters, he gave that
    sandwich to someone else, and we got a lean lean one,
    though smoky enough. I thought it was subpar and didn't
    go back for the rib tips, instead wandering back through
    for a substitute and maybe a drink for myself.

    During these peregrinations I heard a voice as I went
    past - Hi, Michael, bye, Michael. I turned around and
    there was Charles the lawyer from North Carolina perched at
    the counter at Fulton Seafood. I joined him and ordered some
    oysters and he toddled down to the beer stand nearby and got
    me a Boulder Shake chocolate porter, which had nice dark
    chocolate flavor cut with a bit of very convincing coffee;
    it was moderately hopped, pretty malty, and 6% alcohol.

    The oysters were all but one pretty good though tiny for
    the $2.75 each,
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