Violently Relaxed

Nikki begins her new job today, a fact which has little bearing on the rest of what I’m going to say except that it influenced our weekend and it should influence the next few months in as much as income ever does. For the curious, she—again—works at the city on a temporary basis, although this time not in the same building as I do, and in fact not even in the same part of town. You’ll have to trust me when I say it sounds more complex than it really is.

But I was talking about the weekend. Friday was technically not an off day for me, but it was Nik’s last day before this extended assignment where she would be home so I used a bit of vacation and took advantage of the opportunity to go see Episode III. After the movie we gathered ourselves and headed out to the Bay Area to meet up with Bossman and Lady to catch a comedy show in San Francisco. We took BART, which for the unfamiliar is like a combination L-Train and Subway which travels to mostly inconvenient locations around the Bay Area until you get to San Francisco where connecting public transportation is plentiful and frequent. Somehow, I always end up walking around after taking BART to the City though and Friday I wore my Doc Martens which virtually guaranteed a hefty hike.

I’m not sure why, but every time I wear those boots I walk a bare minimum of 1.5 miles in them. It’s not that they’re uncomfortable, quite the opposite. It’s just that I don’t wear them too much so my feet aren’t exactly acclimated them.

We were going to grab dinner at the Fog City Diner, a place I’ve been curious about since I was a kid and I saw some Visa commercial featuring the place. I remember the ad for a couple of reasons: One is that it was the first ad I recall which seemed to be for one thing (the restaurant) but was actually about something else (the credit card). I remember wondering if the Fog City Diner had needed to help pay for the ad since they were so prominently featured. The other reason I remember the ad at all was its vibe; it was a local place (I’ve always felt a strange sense of ownership of San Francisco, despite the fact that I’ve never actually lived there) and I sort of assumed the Visa ad was national. It depicted a San Francisco with style, class and a bit of attitude, too. It used the Fog City Diner as a proxy for the whole town with it’s slightly snooty exterior which betrayed a caustic wit and a calculated phoniness to the whole thing which was supposed to disarm the unaccustomed but welcome those in the know. I think it tried to give San Francisco a personality and to me, as a kid, it succeeded.

When we got there I recognized the “No Crybabies” sign on the door that the commercial made a point to highlight; we arrived on the dot for our reservation and were seated quickly near the back, overlooking the Pier buildings. My first thought upon glancing at the menu was that this could be a bad scene for Nik. Her choosy palate is well documented and somehow Bosslady had gotten the impression that the menu would be more classic diner fare (like a souped-up Denny’s). The truth is that Fog City Diner serves what I’d classify as gourmet food with a diner motif. The items featured might be loosely inspired by short-order specialties, but their preparation is definitely not grease-griddled heat lamp ready. The menu is basically two parts: Small plates and large plates. The prices of each are, for a casually upscale restaurant, pretty reasonable. To the adventurous, the menu is difficult to choose from. For the choosy, difficult in a different way. Nikki went with her only real option: Hamburger and french fries. Bosslady tried a chicken dish and Bossman selected two small plates; one with Mu-Shoo Pork Burritos and the other with Fried Green Tomatoes. I went with one of the small plate specials which was Lamb Chops and Potatoes.

I used to, when trying new restaurants, look for something familiar on the menu. The problem with this is the same problem I have with ordering steak at a restaurant: I can cook my own steak just fine. In fact, I have friends who cook steak even better than I do (coughHBcough) whose steak I would far prefer to eat than some random cook in some random restaurant. As far as tasty cuisine goes, I feel like I have steak covered. Likewise, when I used to find something familiar on a new menu, the possible outcomes I had were that it could be a bad example of that particular dish, it could be a decent but unspectacular example, it could be good but not the best I’d ever had or it could be the best example of that dish, ever. Considering that 75% of my options then were to have something that was not as good as similar things I’d had before, it began to seem like a wasted opportunity to pick the hamburger from every menu.

Of course that leads to a bit of a problem with decisions since I’m not exactly decisive. So my next issue began to be the long and arduous task of trying to figure out what I wanted. Usually what I want is a little bit of everything on the menu. Since I’m not independently wealthy, that’s usually not an option so I ended up staring at a menu trying to figure out what to order far longer than the waitstaff, my dining companions and the patrons at the bar enviously eyeing my booth were comfortable with. In establishments I’ve been to frequently, this is still an issue for me. But at least I’ve figured out how to get around it with new places: I either order the special of the day or I ask the server to suggest something. I figure that way I’m less likely to choose something that the chef is sick of cooking (specialties and rotating menu items are probably more satisfying work for a cook) and chances are the restaurant isn’t going to promote something that they do poorly. Plus that way I may end up ordering something I don’t get very often, like lamb chops. Which, I might add, are delicious.

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