Dinner is served with a generous side of anxiety

Gỏi cuốn or summer rolls by Yuchinkay. CC BY 2.0 Generic.
Via Wikimedia Commons.

"You'll have to tell me how this works. I haven't eaten in a restaurant since March." 

 

Neither had I. 

Today Cairo and I went to a favorite Vietnamese restaurant, Pho Hung on Spadina Avenue at St. Andrew Street in Chinatown, for a late lunch/early dinner. Come to think of it, this is the first place we dined together in Toronto when we started dating more than seven years ago this summer.

Since shelter-in-place became the norm here in mid-March, I've done takeout from a Japanese restaurant and a Persian restaurant near where I live, but that, Tim Horton's, and Mary Brown's Fried Chicken, is about as adventurous as I've gotten in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. In defense of both of us, patio dining just reopened in Toronto in late June, but indoor dining only started up again in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) on July 31.

 

First things first: 

• We had to wear masks, except when eating. Even when I went to the washroom, even when we paid the bill, we wore masks.
• We also had to provide our names and telephone numbers in case contact tracing was needed. (We now also have an app in Ontario to help with this as well.)
• All the silverware (in this case, chopsticks, soup spoons, napkins, etc.) came in individual plastic bags, which we opened ourselves.
• Tables were far apart and some were marked with a bright red 'X' so that no one was seated too close to others.

 But that didn't really matter because we were maybe two out of four or five diners in the restaurant. We were easily outnumbered by the staff and the owners.

 

Heretofore, this has been a very busy Vietnamese resto, in the heart of Toronto's main Chinatown. (There are a couple of others.) Maybe we went at an unpopular time or maybe it was just a nice summer day and everybody was at the beach or the cottage, but overall, Chinatown was more lowkey than you would expect on a Saturday afternoon in August.

 

The food was great, as always, maybe even better in some ways than usual but that could in part be down to the fact that we hadn't eaten there in so long. We even peeked into some shops along Spadina, which seemed to be doing a fairly brisk business, despite the pandemic.

 

But I keep thinking about that restaurants, all the restaurants, and how any of them have survived this lockdown. You really have to wonder how most of them, any of them, have held on for this long.

 

So maybe this will make me get out and about a little more, at least once a week, at least for takeout, to put some money back in the economy, other than a steady stream of Amazon and iTunes purchases. I confess that even as a die-hard introvert, I feel somewhat stir crazy at this point, ready for company, some activity, new sights and sounds, and definitely something other than my own cooking when I can be bothered to cook at all.  I can only imagine how the extroverts among us are doing. 

 

Stage 3 of reopening, where we are currently in the GTA, still feels a little raw, a little chancy, a little brutal even. There seem to be more homeless people on the street, in my own neighborhood and in Chinatown. We're not even close to normal, but perhaps today was one small step toward normalcy. Hopefully so. 

 

And then this evening we watched the news and learned that the province is back up to having more than one hundred new COVID-19 cases reported per day, a number not seen since early summer. Our infection rate is small stuff compared to what's going on in the States and other parts of the world, but that and the fact that the U.S.-Canada border is closed to travel for the foreseeable future are signs that the pandemic isn't done messing with us just yet.

 

The Little Red Hen

"I will," said the Little Red Hen. From The Washington Post, 25 June 2018

Well, damn. I did not see this coming.

To be honest, I have mixed feelings about this turn of events, asking Professional Liar and Trump Administration Accomplice Sarah Huckabee Sanders to leave a restaurant, The Red Hen, where she was having dinner on Friday evening, June 22. It comes on the heels of both Professional Ghoul Stephen Miller and Professional Liar in Charge of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen being driven out, on separate occasions, from Mexican restaurants in Washington, D.C.--in this case, by customers, not the owners.

I know people with "moral convictions" will use these events as excuses to exclude and deny service to all sorts of people, based on perceptions of race, origin, gender, appearance, sexuality, sexual orientation, religion, beliefs, politics, etc. And despite the attempt to parse the recent "gay wedding cake" decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, that the problem wasn't what you did but how you did it, the takeaway from this for some is that it's OK to persecute some "minorities" but not others. And some evangelicals see themselves as a persecuted minority. (Hint: Just because people don't like you doesn't mean you're persecuted. Maybe you've made a nuisance of yourself and wrapped yourself in the flag and Jesus's garments one time too many. Maybe you're just unlikable.)

But despite my qualms, I'm impressed with the consultation the owner of The Red Hen held with her staff and risk the owner was willing to take in order to take a stand. I don't envy the backlash she's no doubt already receiving, but I admire and applaud her actions and her explanation for why she did so.

These aren't normal times. And acting like bigots, oppressors, liars, accomplices, and oligarchs should be greeted benignly, graciously, or politely, ignoring what they do in order to feed, clothe, or house them--well, that ended the day Mexican immigrants were labeled as rapists, the day white nationalists were deemed just another "side," the day yet another black person got shot just for trying not to get shot, the day another woman was assaulted and no one suffered any consequences, the day a reporter with a disability was mocked, the day someone had the legal right to deny baking a wedding cake for a couple because they saw it as "supportive of their lifestyle," the day that ... well, you get the picture.

Gay people asking for a wedding cake aren't committing or carrying out a "lifestyle choice." Black people, Mexicans, women, the differently abled, immigrants, and all the rest of us are just trying to live our lives. With Sarah Huckabee Sanders holding this job, stonewalling and lying to the press and the American people, using religious beliefs to justify the administration's often illegal, often unethical actions--these are lifestyle choices, choices that do great harm to many people.

Last time I checked, ordering a cake from a baker didn't cause the baker physical or mental harm.

If someone denied people having dinner at a restaurant because they were perceived to be religious or evangelical or simply because they're white, I'd be bothered by that, too. A lot. And I would speak out against it. I don't accept bigotry toward anyone. I may have to remind myself of this from time to time--like all of us, I have my blind spots--but I'm not in a position nor have as my life's mission the desire to hurt or harm others. Unlike the current crowd in Washington.

In this case, simply being isn't the problem. Actively lying to, oppressing, and demonizing others, making their lives less secure, even threatening and dangerous, then expecting to get away with it without consequence, now that's a problem.

And, America, we have a problem.

Beet it

I can't remember who first mentioned chocolate beetroot cake to me. It was definitely someone on Twitter from South Africa, but as to who exactly, I won't reveal, in part because I can't remember. Are beets good for short-term memory? Let's hope so.

Anyway, I finally gave it a go, baking one tonight--after first roasting the beets nearly a week ago and after having roasted another batch a month or so ago but, after repeated culinary delays, eventually tossing them. I figured I didn't want both beetroot cake and salmonella.

The cake turned out pretty good, if I do say so. Chocolately and rich bit not cloying or sickening. I thought it could have been a little sweeter (I used honey and maple syrup, rather than sugar) and moister (at 40 minutes, it didn't seem done enough; at 45, mmmm, maybe a little too done?). Thus I'm going to make a glaze tomorrow, which will hopefully resolve both issues or at least hide both failings.

Truth be told, I'm not a great baker. I can generally manage cakes, but I am ashamed to admit I've never really attempted a pie, other than a Québécois tarte au sucre, which after two goes, I still can't get right. The filling never sticks--which is amazingly difficult not to do with a mixture of brown sugar and butter--and I'm too skittish to make my own crust. Resolution for a new year: Bake a damn pie already.

And maybe make more cakes. The good thing about a beetroot cake is that it gives the illusion of healthiness. I'll take what I can get at this point, but all in all, this wasn't as deadly as it might have been. Some butter, yes, but the aforementioned honey and maple syrup, a little olive oil, and no dairy. So I'll have to go screw it up with some cream cheese, Karo syrup, or a stick of butter. That's the solution! Beetroot Kiev! The perfect Russian-Ukrainian dessert.

* * *

Ah yes, the South African obsession continues, having moved on from music and history to foodways. I roasted a fairly decent chicken over Thanksgiving, stuffed with sage and onion, coated in butter and stone-ground mustard, taking the recipe from Lazy Days (or as my friend Cali put it, Boozhy Days), a cookbook by South African "lifestyles" author Phillippa Cheifitz, with which my sister gifted me after her last SA sojourn. Lazy, boozhy, lovely, snooty--whatever, it's a gorgeous book featuring some delicious food, even if there's not a chance in Good Hope I'll find a supply of snoek at Wholey's fish market in the Strip District anytime soon.

I'm even toying with the idea of trying to make koeksisters, a South African pastry that resembles twists or braids, which sounds inordinately complicated to prepare and taxing even to my level of cultural stalking.

So maybe, instead, focus on pie for the new year. Something all-American, like apple. Or cherry. Or beetroot pecan.