MEMORIAL MEAL for MOM
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How can you rate a meal after you just spent a sadly surreal time either across the street viewing your one & only mom (while numbingly accepting condolences from god knows who), or right after a burial that seemed straight out of someone else's nightmare....where my lovely basically freaked out & a few strong people had to almost carry her back to the limo?
Apparently the double whammy of both extreme grief & hypoglycemia can evoke Emmy Award winning drama that can blow anything out of the water that Hollywood can ever dream of.
Therefore, this Cafe, by being directly across the street from the Marine Park Funeral Home, seems to play a necessary, but maybe reluctant, role in one of the worst days of some of our lives. On the other hand, death may be good for business, just as birthing units bring big profits to hospitals.
Apparently, we & this place totally dropped the ball on a coherent comfy & logical seating arrangement. The tables were all so close to the wall that you could not move unless 2-15 people got out first. There was no way to mingle, nor did we have a coherent seating arrangement. As the eldest son, I was stuck out in the periphery with my brother's quite vocal friends, where I would have rather had been moved to be near the two people who survived my mom.
Anyway, we did not feel very talkative anyway....
except for periodic yelling above the din to get special orders made for my veggie wife & me.
I must have had to stand up, yell & wave, to get what we needed about a dozen times.
Thank the lord that I already started out numb & in morose acceptance of the loss of my poor wonderful mom to begin with. She was extremely ill for several months & I had went through all the stages of grief already, and I was at peace, because my mom was now at peace.
I totally hate rituals, for the sake of having to have them, and this was one of them. Anyway, somehow we made it through this added cacophonous ordeal,
and did finally eat.
Being the Maverick that I am, I only ordered what I damned well pleased off the menu...forget the suggested stuff.
My veggie wife totally engulfed their Portobello Cheese Tomato Appetizer & even ate half of their vege Pasta.....I still have no idea whether she enjoyed it or not...since she was far more shell shocked than I.
My Veal dish was OK, but nothing amazing to shock me out of my numbness.
Since I live right near the best vineyards in the world (in CA), the provided crappy table wine looked repulsive..... I was not going to drink...until I saw an almost full
pitcher of amber beer at the other end of the table...(later ID'ed as Samuel Adams)
after some more yelling & waving, the beer was right in front of me...
& I kept drinking one after another glass of that beer (in a tiny little wine glass),
until the noise became less irksome & I felt calmer....& the pitcher was nearly
gone by then.
The Limo then brought us back home, where I promptly sat down & slumbered.
Ending one of the worst days....
Oh...The Carrot Cake was pretty decent. This place was kind of off, since it was part-Irish-pub- part-Italian, but had a majority of Asian cooks & help....but then again...I was definitely off too. Normally, I would have Yelped this place first, but no one asked me. We flew 3,000 miles for this?
Sadly much of Brooklyn (& NYC in general) has gone rapidly downhill in the decades after I left for Hawaii & the West Coast. It seems that much of the good taste has gone Westward as well. read more