Member-only story
I Dream of Restaurants
I have a complicated relationship with food. In the years when most of you would go home for a meal from Mom or Grandma and feel yourselves reset, I had no one to go to but the restaurants that were used to me dining alone. If I had the money, that is.
Between 13 and 17, I never really had enough to eat or a stable home to live in. It was easier to get a beer or a cigarette than it was to get a meal. There were periods of time where I felt safe, had enough, knew what tomorrow would bring. But mostly there were days of grinding poverty — hunger, discomfort, stress. By my twenties, I had made enough cleaning houses that I could at least care for myself and my dog.
I never was so crass as to go out on major holidays for a meal, mostly to avoid the pitying looks, but also because restaurant workers want to go home to their families too on holidays. It felt like an imposition to be there, you know? So I tried to only dine out when I had the money to pay and the time to enjoy, free of too much guilt around their service.
I still don’t feel comfortable in the houses of people I don’t know very well when I see food set out for guests. I always feel like people are judging me for eating it. Seeing that somehow a worthless person has snuck into the room and is pretending to fit in.
I will never be one of the people who belongs. Not to any place or any person. I am just a traveller, stopping past on my way. I won’t take up too much space, and then I will be gone again. Forgive me for eating eight of these hors d’ouevres — they’re just so delicious.
I have a reverence for a well run restaurant, fondly recalling meals that I have had the way you recall good holiday dinners your Mum made you.
My favourite job of all time as a young person was running a coffeshop called Rainbow Cafe. That felt like home.
Some places just enchant you when you eat there and you never forget the feeling. Fast and French felt like home. The Primrose House felt like home. Jack’s Cafe felt like home. Alice’s Soul Food felt like home. The Staghorn felt like home.
Only home didn’t feel like home, because I couldn’t even get in. They didn’t want me. But if I could pay, a restaurant would have me.
