Messy Food
The Source
Local comedian and Jacksonville bread man Jeff Westerfield was a senior in high school when I treated him and a few of his graduating friends to an evening of fine dining at the old Bauer’s Restaurant in Springfield. It was, in my Arenzville-trained estimation, the very height of hoity-toity-ness in our area. White tablecloths, oaken bookcases covering the walls, the waiters who didn’t make a single note while taking our orders, and none of the diners had white socks under the cuffs of their dark suits. It was the silk underwear of local gastronomy. I’d ordered Steak Diane just so the students could witness the awe-inspiring spectacle of a piece of meat bursting into flame at our table. I assume that Jeff ordered some sort of fish and that’s why he got the lemon. But this was not any lemon. This was a Bauer’s lemon.. . specifically an entire half a lemon with a cheesecloth wrapper to keep the juicy citrus from squirting all over his fellow diners. I’ll admit that I’d never seen this seemingly silly but understandable convenience. The 17-year-old Jeff was puzzled. He picked up the lemon, looked at the oilcloth covering and said loud enough for the senators and lobbyists at the next table to hear, “Hey! Somebody put pants on my lemon!” It brought a laugh to the entire restaurant. Tim Greene at the same table sat sipping his water and after every drink a nearby steward would reach over and fill his glass. Tim leaned over to me and said, “Mr. Bradbury, my mom taught me to clean up everything on my plate but I can’t keep up with this sucker and his water pitcher.” Okay, it was culinary overkill, but a treat for us country kids. And whom were they fooling? When these highly starched waiters went home they no doubt grabbed an order of fries from Hardees. Neat eating. Precise and orderly consumption. Miss Manners would be proud but sometimes the niceties of fancy dining just wear me out. Cruise ship dining is a close as most of us get to the highlife and among the silliest of the ritzy-eating customs is the “service plate.” When you sit down at the table, a clean white plate awaits you. Then as soon as the waiter brings the menu, he whisks the plate away. You didn’t use it. Nobody used it. As far as I know, no one ever uses it. It’s just there for looks. Like kissing your sister, you can go through the motions but it just doesn’t mean much. After each course another waiter steps forward with what looks like a carved-out stainless steel graduation pen and scrapes the crumbs away from your place setting. This summer in Alaska I asked the waiter the name of this odd instrument seemingly used only for scraping crumbs. He looked at me like I was from …well…Arenzville…and said, “It’s called a crumb scraper.” Made me want to put pants on his lemon. And I wonder…I just wonder now that we’re deep into the bounty of summer’s produce, if food didn’t taste just a little bit better when we could be sloppy. A friend brought me a bag of peaches fresh off his backyard tree. As soon as I got out of the car I bit into one and the thing absolutely exploded with not only flavor, but a gusher of juice. It was much later that night in my shower when I finally washed the final bits out of my beard. I enjoyed that peach all day. Can watermelon truly be enjoyed when cut into neat squares and displayed like fruity kiddy blocks on a buffet table? Don’t you have to dig into the red flesh with a fork, raise an unsculptured hunk to your mouth, then spit the seeds onto your brother’s plate to truly enjoy the thing? And then perhaps end the meal as my dad always did by hurling the fork across the table and sticking it in your rind? A restaurant back in Perry used to serve tenderloins so huge that they completely overflowed the edges of the Wonder Bread. In fact, it was all a ten-year-old pair of hands could do to hold it. The finer restaurants today would cut the plentiful piece of pork into quarters or perhaps eighths and serve them on a bed of romaine lettuce. Maybe that’s why today’s tenderloins can’t match the taste of The Village Inn. (80 cents, by the way.) Okay, I’m not advocating a total food fight in the local Perkins, but is there anyone at the dinner table who’s happier than the toddler smearing applesauce all over his face then licking his fingers? It’s summer. Have fun with your food. Get messy. If someone objects, ask him to eat at the next table.