USA. A breakfast counter. The waitress recommended the biscuits and gravy, and when the plate arrived, I thought something had gone wrong in the kitchen.
I say this with shame. The dish looked like a construction site after rain. Pale mounds. Gray ladle-fall. Speckles I could not identify.
In my land, the eye eats first. A meal is arranged like a garden. This meal was arranged like weather.
"Is itโฆ finished?" I asked, carefully.
"Honey, that's what it looks like."
The man beside me was already eating his. He did not look up. "Just try it."
I am a man who has charged hillsides at dawn. I raised the fork. I tried it.
I must now formally apologize to the biscuits, the gravy, the waitress, the kitchen, and the entire breakfast tradition of the American South.
It was magnificent. Warm. Peppered. The biscuit drank the gravy the way a field drinks rain โ THAT is why it is shaped like that, you fool โ and every mound I had insulted was a soft fold of comfort that my homeland, in eight hundred years, never once thought to invent.
"Well?" the waitress asked.
"I judged it," I confessed. "By its appearance. I am ashamed."
"Everybody does, hon."
Everybody does. A national dish that forgives you for doubting it. It expects the doubt. It waits for you on the other side of it.
Do not judge the gravy by its face. Judge yourself, for hesitating.
I order it every Saturday now. I no longer see the construction site. I see only the garden.
It was a garden the whole time. The eye must be trained.
My man just experienced Death By A Thousand Chips and itโs a masterpiece
โI was not hungry. I was not comfortable. I had been defeated by a courtesy.โ
Updated list of nicknames after reading your comments:
Shane Gillis-Alexander
Marshmello Anthony
Cream Abdul-Jabbar
Dominique Milkins
Shaquille Oatmeal
Allen 4-EyeVerson
Bam ICantSeeYou
Kevin McPale (er)
The White Llama
DโWhite Howard
Milk Chamberlin
LeQuant Frames
Frames Worthy
LeBron Frames
NO-Air Jordan
Dork Nowitzki
Nikola Nerdic
SLU Alcindor
Steph Blurry
Shine Kemp
Spud White
Fair Jordan
Larry Nerd
No matter how you spell it, Robbie Avila is a legend