Happy Hour

Dearest Rachel –

The farther I get from your presence in terms of time, the less I remember the way things were when you had to leave as opposed to how they are now. I want to say that the hole in the wall Daniel and I went to yesterday was already a Japanese restaurant – and that the three of us checked it out together (or maybe it was just the two of us on a date night) – but I also remember it being remodeled after you were gone. Maybe I misremember – which I tend to fear about a lot of things – but I doubt you would remember it as Siegelman’s Deli.

In any event, it’s been turned into a ramen shop with very much the same feel as that of any place that you might find over in Japan, complete with counter seating (although with a bit of a wall between the seated customer and the counter itself, so you can’t really see behind it). Not that it would matter, as – unlike a restaurant actually in Japan – the kitchen is actually in another room behind the counter, so even if the wall wasn’t there, it’s not as if you could watch your order being prepared. It also means that a waitress has to come around the counter to bring your order out, as opposed to the cook handing it to you from his own hands. So yeah, maybe it isn’t as much like a real Japanese-style restaurant, after all.

Then again, the whole place has a certain ambience about it that just feels like it was lifted out of there. Even the fact that it has various bits of faux(?) Americana strewn about it, along with the red lanterns advertising ramen, and its stereo blares American pop music doesn’t detract from the effect; it just feels like the proprietors are proud to be able to run their Japanese restaurant in America, bringing their food to our culture – not that we have any shortage of the stuff in our particular area, but that’s fine.

Daniel and I have been here often enough that we get the occasional promotional text from them, advertising certain deals, and over the weekend, we got another one of those, like we did from the hot dog place on Saturday. In fact, when I informed him of the notice, he was wanting to go there on Sunday, but when we got out of church, the place wasn’t ready to open for a couple of hours. So we pushed it off to yesterday instead.

Not that, as it turned out, we needed to; by the time I had wrapped up ‘work’ for the day and returned home from the ‘office’ (and Daniel dragged himself out of the bath), it was nearly three in the afternoon. This got us there during what the place referred to as their “happy hour” (which looked to be between two and three hours long, but no matter), where their ramen was half again cheaper than the deal they had texted us, and the appetizers were half-price. Essentially, if we can to take advantage of the bargain we’d been sent, it would have cost us that much more. So we were happy to take them up on it, and ordered what turned out to be way too much; although this turned out to be a good and bad thing.

You see, for all the reduction in price afforded by their “happy hour,” they also only had a limited menu to choose from. It was basically either their standard ramen, or a spicy version of the same – plus all the half-off appetizers. We both saw no problem with the regular ramen, although Daniel was mildly disappointed to not be able to order his usual curry set (and to tell the truth, I would have preferred their curry ramen, but these are the restrictions we have to deal with by being here at an off hour).

Once everything came out, we realized how much we’d actually ordered; I tend to forget how huge those bowls are. Even the appetizers were more than I’d expected; I’d ordered an egg roll for each of us, only to receive two separate plates of five or six of them – granted, they were about the length and slightly thicker than my fingers, but that’s more than any single such roll you’d expect – and the karaage (a word I never knew until Akiko brought them over to the house in the wake of your accident) were each about the size of your fist. We’d definitely overdone things.

However, that turned out to be a good thing because, after a couple of spoonfuls of broth and a few bites of meat, veg and noodle into his ramen, Daniel recoiled like he’d seen a snake; “What’s that?”

‘That’ turned out to be a shrimp, followed by a scallop or two, and while I happily scarfed them down for him, along with certain less identifiable bites (I think one was chewy enough to be octopus, but the other fell apart in my mouth; I’ve no idea what it was, but I had a pretty good bet that it was seafood, too), he was suddenly gun shy about continuing. Bad enough that he couldn’t have his curry; this soup was positively teeming with seafood. For a while, he was willing to continue eating the pork that had been displayed topping the whole thing, and he seemed to still enjoy the broth, but now that he was aware that it was all touching the fishy stuff, he was progressively less enthused about it. At the same time, he was apologizing for his reticence in terms of eating it, when he’d pressed for me to take advantage of the offer in the first place.

But that was the nice thing about having over-ordered appetizers; it’s not as if he was going hungry. In fact, he couldn’t even finish the karaage; which was fine, because I was already going to bring home his soup, since I could barely finish mine. I might have it (well, some of it – his order filled two whole containers) for breakfast tomorrow; I don’t know. Still, lesson learned; don’t bother with “happy hour,” unless we’ve got a hankering for the appetizers. Which you never know; the day might come, all the same.

We did manage to walk those calories off thereafter, too, since we’d intended to go shopping while we were out. It was definitely a case of grocerying while stuffed – although we still managed to exceed this month’s supply of coupons by a fairly wide margin, regardless. Then again, we had a fairly specific list to hunt for, and some of the things on that list weren’t particularly cheap; hey, it isn’t as if everywhere can have happy hour all at once, and what would that look like at a grocery store, anyway?

But that was how things went yesterday; the plans and the screwups, the lessons and the accomplishments. Don’t know what you would have thought of it all, honey, and I wish you could have come with us; I think you would have enjoyed the moment and all its banal glory. Still, if you can keep an eye on us, that would count for something; and if you could wish us well, that would be great. We could still use it.