Eyy here’s David Lynch describing why I also just eat the same thing every day. Less brain time spent on deciding what to eat! Just chow down on the same tasty vittles and think about more interesting things.
Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019) dir. Céline Sciamma The Florida Project (2017) dir. Sean Baker The Farewell (2019) dir. Lulu Wang Moonlight (2016) dir. Barry Jenkins Little Women (2019) dir. Greta Gerwig God’s Own Country (2017) dir. Francis Lee In the Mood for Love (2000) dir. Wong Kar-wai
I’ve become someone with a rigid routine. Same meals for lunch and dinner, same bus and train schedules. Gotta control something in a world that feels chaotic, you know.
My Saturday meals (satmeals) are the highlight of this rigid life structure. Salad, soup, cheese, bread, beer, dessert. SSCBBD.
Salad is almost always a large caesar salad. The importance of the sharpness or tanginess of caesar salad dressing cannot be overstated. A real tongue whip, smack to the senses. The lettuce is the means to deliver that flavor, and along with the croutons forms the textural foundation. The extra cotija or parmesan brings it home. This is the church around which I developed my devotion to this idol, the satmeal.
Soup is jambalaya when available, minestrone when it’s not. Wholesome, filling, and something about these feels homey and inviting, like my mom’s heavily tomato-based Mexican home cooking. I always think I should try a chowder or potato leek, but those cream-based soups never quite scratch the soup itch.
Cheese always refers to a softball-sized ball of fresh mozzarella. Unlike the sharp cheese flavors from the salad, the fresh mozzarella is more subtle, and not as excessive or heavy as a ball of cheese might sound. It’s like eating a lightly salted cloud. Calvin Trillin’s “Mozzarella Story” brought these into my life and while I’ve yet to attain the authenticity of Trillin’s mozzarella tales, I don’t believe one can go wrong with a ball of fresh mozzarella. The smoked variant is my favorite.
Bread is where I feel I’m lacking. In keeping with my approach to the mozzarella, I like to handle these with my hands. Just a roll of bread (or two), torn apart by hand and dunked into the soup. No knives, no butters or spreads. I’m absolutely trying to be a man I’m not, but it still feels good and of the moment. The lacking aspect is I don’t go to a bakery to grab fresh bread, and perhaps I should. Wouldn’t you?
Beer, I can’t believe this one. I very clearly remember not caring about beer. Now I do and I’m flummoxed. It’s always a single serving, a stovepipe can. Never the cheap stuff that tastes like skunk (where did that idea come from?) Almost always a pale ale which, let me say, isn’t exactly a fine flavor either, and yet it feels essential to have a good, hardy, strong beer as part of the meal. With so much food in here, and a deliberately carefree sense of fuck it, there isn’t even an edge to take off. I guess, yeah, sometimes a beer is just a beer.
Finally, and critically, I became a cake man. Like beer, I used to relegate cake to the lowest rung of stuff I want to eat. I’d take any pie, and certainly a flan or custard, over a slice of cake. Then I met tuxedo truffle cake. Imagine your standard, dry layers of pointless cake, then replace most of those layers with chocolate and vanilla mousse, top it with chocolate ganache, and add a side of more chocolate mousse for good measure. I wasn’t just a cake avoider, but I also barely cared about chocolate. This cake brought it all together, wove something special out of elements that could not stand alone. And sometimes, if the mood is right and the time allows, I instead grab a pint of honey salted-caramel roasted-almond ice cream, as decadent as the word count implies.
I can be mercurial enough that this won’t matter in a year or five, but at this point in time there are satmeals and the process of piecing together a perfect moment.
I’ve become someone with a rigid routine. Same meals for lunch and dinner, same bus and train schedules. Gotta control something in a world that feels chaotic, you know.
My Saturday meals (satmeals) are the highlight of this rigid life structure. Salad, soup, cheese, bread, beer, dessert. SSCBBD.
Salad is almost always a large caesar salad. The importance of the sharpness or tanginess of caesar salad dressing cannot be overstated. A real tongue whip, smack to the senses. The lettuce is the means to deliver that flavor, and along with the croutons forms the textural foundation. The extra cotija or parmesan brings it home. This is the church around which I developed my devotion to this idol, the satmeal.
Soup is jambalaya when available, minestrone when it’s not. Wholesome, filling, and something about these feels homey and inviting, like my mom’s heavily tomato-based Mexican home cooking. I always think I should try a chowder or potato leek, but those cream-based soups never quite scratch the soup itch.
Cheese always refers to a softball-sized ball of fresh mozzarella. Unlike the sharp cheese flavors from the salad, the fresh mozzarella is more subtle, and not as excessive or heavy as a ball of cheese might sound. It’s like eating a lightly salted cloud. Calvin Trillin’s “Mozzarella Story” brought these into my life and while I’ve yet to attain the authenticity of Trillin’s mozzarella tales, I don’t believe one can go wrong with a ball of fresh mozzarella. The smoked variant is my favorite.
Bread is where I feel I’m lacking. In keeping with my approach to the mozzarella, I like to handle these with my hands. Just a roll of bread (or two), torn apart by hand and dunked into the soup. No knives, no butters or spreads. I’m absolutely trying to be a man I’m not, but it still feels good and of the moment. The lacking aspect is I don’t go to a bakery to grab fresh bread, and perhaps I should. Wouldn’t you?
Beer, I can’t believe this one. I very clearly remember not caring about beer. Now I do and I’m flummoxed. It’s always a single serving, a stovepipe can. Never the cheap stuff that tastes like skunk (where did that idea come from?) Almost always a pale ale which, let me say, isn’t exactly a fine flavor either, and yet it feels essential to have a good, hardy, strong beer as part of the meal. With so much food in here, and a deliberately carefree sense of fuck it, there isn’t even an edge to take off. I guess, yeah, sometimes a beer is just a beer.
Finally, and critically, I became a cake man. Like beer, I used to relegate cake to the lowest rung of stuff I want to eat. I’d take any pie, and certainly a flan or custard, over a slice of cake. Then I met tuxedo truffle cake. Imagine your standard, dry layers of pointless cake, then replace most of those layers with chocolate and vanilla mousse, top it with chocolate ganache, and add a side of more chocolate mousse for good measure. I wasn’t just a cake avoider, but I also barely cared about chocolate. This cake brought it all together, wove something special out of elements that could not stand alone. And sometimes, if the mood is right and the time allows, I instead grab a pint of honey salted-caramel roasted-almond ice cream, as decadent as the word count implies.
I can be mercurial enough that this won’t matter in a year or five, but at this point in time there are satmeals and the process of piecing together a perfect moment.
I stole the photo below from the Yelp page for Sanchez Taqueria in Tigard, OR. It’s a good example of the layout for the tables at Sanchez.
But let’s enhance.
They are all equipped with the same set of green salsa (mild), red salsa (hot and smoky), chili oil (haven’t tried it), and napkins.
Those salsa bottles are designed to last. It is the perfect size for my style of burrito enjoyment in which I take a bite, pour on a little salsa, take a bite, more salsa, etc. This enhances the burrito to far greater heights. I used to loathe hot salsas for reasons I cannot fathom but somehow I realized, yes, every bite of a burrito is far better with salsa in the mix. So I have to lament when I visit many taquerias and see that their salsa options come in limited quantities, often in those little two-inch high containers. I imagine cost is a factor, the fear that salsa jerks will use too much. But it’s a small feature that makes a big impact.
So please, restaurants, hook it up with the salsa. Invest in happiness.
Another well-established innovation that I think is sorely underutilized in the taqueria industry is the drive-through. I like the ambiance in a taqueria as much as anyone. ‘Bidibidi bombom’ is fine musical accompaniment for a meal. But sometimes it’s just necessary to pick up a quick bite via car window. To this day, the only taqueria I know with a drive-through is El Faro in South San Francisco.
I was just there yesterday, in fact. I ordered their breakfast burrito. Everyone wore masks and gloves, as one does during a pandemic, and then I ate a good lunch. The drive-through enabled that bit of happiness in troubled times.
The salsas from the restaurant were limited but one prepares for such eventualities.
Stay safe out there. Remember that burritos come wrapped in easily disinfected aluminum foil and your local spots could use the support. Many are available on delivery services such as DoorDash (tip your driver very, very well). A burrito is also a good meal to take on a walk to someplace where you can maintain 6 feet of distance from everyone else. We should live cautiously but not in fear.
