Emchap's Shit from the Internet 11/13/19 🍠
I am, by and large, a routine person. There are a variety of ways in which this manifests in my life—all varying degrees of maladaptive—but the most recent one that's come up in therapy is the fact that, once I find a dish I like at a restaurant, I will just keep ordering that dish from now until approximately the time I die.
Is La Fonda a good restaurant? Well, if you order the vegetarian bocadillo, yes. Is anything else on the menu good? I will never know.
Some of this is just my weird anxiety about control, some of it is an adaptation to the fact that I have an unmatched talent for being misunderstood by waitstaff (one day I will figure out the precise reason why, but that day has yet to come), much of it is that I am the queen of wanting a thing that I know will be enjoyable over novelty. (Relatedly, I am an aggressively monogamous person.)
All of this came to mind this weekend at a friend's birthday party, which was held at the same bar as last year's birthday party. The bar, unusually for much of LA, had a grilled pimento cheese sandwich on their menu. (A food stuff that, because I am gross, I love.) The bar also has a somewhat stressful ordering process because the only place to order without shoving yourself in front of other patrons is directly behind a support beam where—if you are a slightly mousy, slightly short person who dislikes asserting herself in bars—it is easy to be overlooked by waitstaff.
So, when I caught the bartender's eye, I was ready: I had looked back over the menu earlier that day on their website, and I knew I wanted that grilled cheese. There was a menu on the bar that I could not read because the entire restaurant is lit for Ambience, but it did not matter. I put in my order.
It was at this point that I learned that the restaurant has dropped the grilled cheese from the menu. Forced to pick something new, I was sent into a spiral of decision paralysis, before panic-ordering the thing on the menu which had replaced it: an elote quesadilla.
I was hungry, and it was equally cheesy and filling, and it does not change the fact that I am still sadly thinking about the Grilled Cheese I Did Not Have.
Almost certainly my therapist would have something to say about this, but for me the big takeaway is, I think, that I should make some pimento cheese.
Shit to read
I am so old and so tired and New York is so boring in the way it tries to be shocking. (I realize this is a reductive analysis.)
Whelp, this was an uncomfortable it me. (Off to the Neighborhood Council meetings I will go, next week.)
Fuck Barstool, though.
Jia Tolentino is excellent (just finished her book) and I loved this essay on Reformation.
My dad sent me this Jenny Slate piece and I was trying to explain that he almost certainly knows Jenny Slate even if not by name and anyway it's very good, as is her Netflix special.
Advertising is a con and this is delicious.
ACAB.
Shit to eat
Have the experience indicated above.
Go home, and decide that you could do this better than the betraying bar which took away your sandwich (even if they do stock a hefeweizen, which is a strong vote in their favor because FUCK YOU, sour beers and IPAs).
Take some frozen corn and toss it into a bowl.
Add a glop of mayo and some sour cream and some cotija.
Stir it all up.
Add chili powder and some ground up ancho chiles until you feel like you've defeated jokes about not seasoning your food.
Squeeze in lime until it tastes good.
Heat up the cast iron. Once you do, add a little bit of oil and wait for it to heat.
In goes a tortilla, some quesadilla cheese (pre-shredded because fuck it), some of your corn, and then more quesadilla cheese. Add some cilantro in there if you're not a soap taster. Final tortilla on top.
Cook until things are melted down, and flip it over. It's a quesadilla, you know how this works.
Once everything is cooked, sprinkle it with salt, cut it apart, and eat it in messy couch glory.
Shit to watch
This is an LA-specific recommendation, but I saw the stage adaptation of Key Largo at the Geffen last night, and it's very good! Go watch it, if you like noir or very impressive stage effects for hurricanes.
Shit to buy
A very cozy throw under which to nap/stave off winter chill/canoodle. Get this one, if you're rich. (I have been using a free fleece blanket with the Dodgers logo and Hello Kitty on it, so like, also that.)