Spicy Food....

...Makes Your Nose Drip.

This is not about that.

This is about the restaurants that are close to my house.

There are 4 notables.

1/ Subvay Sandviches
2/ Cali N' Titos (enjoy our Latin Thing) food stand.
3/ Casa de Wafle (Waffle Home)
4/ Kelly's Jerk Wings.

Generally, I think all 5-10 of you agree that big corporations are not that cool. Hence, we probably shouldn't eat their food. Clearly, my readership, not really all that politically diverse. That's ok, the people who aren't reading this are jerks. In that spirit, I do my darndest to eat at the two that you can't find anywhere else. Just one location in the whole wide world.

Stepping outside of an obvious conclusion, I also choose to eat at these two even though in some instances the others taste better. I've had conversations with Th' D about this before. It is and will continue to be my contention that if a person running a restaurant is awesome, people should eat there, even if their product (foodness) is average, or, to a reasonable extent, sub-par. I could talk at length about Calientitos, given that they let people who otherwise don't work up front in Georgia work up front. But I'll leave it at what I just wrote.

Kelly's, on the other hand, deserves an extended comment. I've never eaten much Jamaican food, so it's not something I wake up, go to bed, or spend the parts of my day between those two things (waking and dreaming) craving. And, honestly, even with a profound love for jalapenos cultivated over the last few years, everything on their menu makes my nose drip. Seriously. Chicken (drip), cabbage (drip), goat (drip drip), spicy squash (fw0000sh).

Still, the food's pretty good once the pain subsides. More important, Kelly (there actually is a Kelly, dope) has the most infectious smile of anybody I've ever met. Moreover, he makes a special point to know the name of everyone who goes there on a semi-regular basis (he asked mine today). MOREOVER, he and his wife are the only two people that work there. He's friendly and laughs and jokes, she's no-nonsense and looks tired all the time (finances?), but clearly loves her husband and how happy it makes him.

Short story, community is as important to me as delectable stufffoods. Short of multiple bouts of food poisoning, I will walk to these restaurants at least once every couple of weeks, if only because it's like visiting friends. By paying to hang out with them and use their napkins as tissues, I can keep them around.

drip drip drip *sniffle*,

-kev-may-can



Ps. I secretly eat at Waffle House once a month. ummMmm...Wafful.