restaurant review
Jan. 22nd, 2020 03:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
catwif3rating: soft m (canon-typical graphic descriptions)
word count: 2242
fandom: the magnus archives (os: original statement)
==================================
statement of joseph martinez, about an encounter with a pop-up restaurant in eugene, oregon.
statement begins:
i work in food. a bit snobby about it, if i'm being honest. my mother is a wonderful chef, and i remember the first time i stayed for dinner at a friends house, how i was so surprised and dismayed at the unseasoned chicken and limp salad that was all that was on offer. i didn't eat much that night; just enough to cover an eight-year-old's understanding of "enough to be polite."
my girlfriend, anna coleman, had just broken up with me that week, so my friends kyle reyes, chris easton, and tia ellis had demanded i go out with them, to take my mind off it. anna had just said that i was "too much of a doormat," for her, so i thought, what the hell, why not prove her right. i said okay, and that's how i ended up bar-hopping on a weekday night.
by the time we were done, it was two in the morning, and we were all too sloshed to see straight. so when tia says, "is that place new?" i decided that i needed to check it out. i love trying new restaurants, and eugene is supposed to be big on that "farm to table" idea, so there's always new little places trading out spaces as each one succeeds or fails. the fact that by this time of night, most of them aren't open anymore, did not occur to me until i'd already leaned into the door, and chris had to catch me before i fell into the place.
it smelled weird, was the first thing i noticed. like spices from too many different families, overwhelming and too complex. and under that, a musty, iron-and-salt smell like old steak, or blood. it was the strangest restaurant i'd ever been in; the lighting was more suited to a nightclub, directional cans slashing yellow-red-pink over the tables and floor. there were only, like, three tables in the entire place. it struck me as... odd, they could easily have fit more, little as it was. they just... hadn't used the space they had as efficiently as i knew a restaurant wanting to fit more customers could. i remember drunkenly considering offering this advice to the proprietors.
then something moved behind the counter that separated the dining area from a previously dark space i now realized was an open, in-view kitchen. for a moment, we all froze, somehow sure that we were about to be thrown out. or maybe something worse. i don't know. then the shadow came out from behind the hood, and resolved itself into a woman.
she was big, with bulky chef's muscles in her arms and shoulders, all of them and about a mile of cleavage put on display by the low-cut apron and tank top she was wearing. she had more piercings than any one person i'd ever seen, and long, messy black hair piled into a haphazard updo that my chefs would have a fit over, but she seemed to be the only one in the place, so maybe she cleaned up when food safety came around. in retrospect, that thought became laughable.
"hey, welcome. take a seat wherever you like," she said, almost disconcertingly normal when something about the place had me so unnerved. tia was even more nervous, shaking her head and hissing that it was too late, we shouldn't impose.
"you're still open?" i asked, just to check.
"of course," she said, "there is always the hunger."
that... seemed weird, the way she phrased that. but again, we were trashed. chris grabbed tia by the arm and dragged her all the way in, placed us at the table with the best view of the kitchen.
the smell only got stronger once we were all the way in, ginger and garlic and herbs, cinnamon and curry and soy, and under it all that dusty, coppery old-meat smell, overlaid with a hot sizzle of fat on a grill. it made my mouth water, now, though, instead of being sour and overwhelming. the lights seemed to get lower, more saturated, as we settled in. tia looked accusingly over the table at me and chris.
"holy shit," chris was saying. "do you think her boobs are real? there's no way. they don't look silicone, though."
"shut up, chris," kyle groaned.
"she can probably hear you," tia added in low hiss. neither of these stopped chris. i couldn't pretend to relate; i'm a "more than a handful's wasted," guy, you know? and something about the swell of her breasts seemed like... if you touched it, your hand would just sink into the flesh until it was eaten entirely. i think i blearily tried to explain this thought, but tia and kyle were unimpressed, and chris just leered and said it would be a way to go.
the chef brought us waters and asked with we'd like anything else to drink? i laughed lamely, said we'd already had enough "else" to drink, and the chef-- sam? sarah? she said her name was, or something, told us we should be careful we didn't "ruin" our livers. there was something about the way she said that.... but we all laughed and agreed, and then she was gone again. she didn't offer us a menu. there wasn't one on a board on the wall or anything, either, but she was gone.
we waited a while, i think. tia wanted to go; kyle, too, as he started to get a tiny bit more sober. chris and i were pretty set on this, though, if for different reasons, so we said they could leave without us if they wanted to, and tia settled down with a huff. kyle, on the other hand, kept getting more and more nervous. "are the lights changing? do you smell that?" he kept asking. chris told him to chill out.
abruptly, the chef-- sam? appeared through the hip-door at the counter, i don't know how long it had been. i was suddenly starving, despite the sheer amount of alcohol calories i'd had before. she set down a different dish for each of us, incongruous; some kind of orange curry or tikka masala for me. fried chicken or pork cutlet on rice for kyle, what looked like carnitas for chris, and jambalaya thick with chunks of meat for tia.
i should have been more confused than i was; we hadn't ordered any of this. at the time, i was too drunk and too hungry to ask questions. the curry wasn't quite like a masala, but not precisely anything else, not like you'd get at an actual indian restaurant. it was spicy, and too much, and i couldn't stop eating. the meat was tender and flaky, in too-large chunks, so you really had to sink your teeth into it. i thought it was pork? but it's a weird thing to have in a curry, or at least indian, so maybe chicken?
sarah (sam?) appeared out of nowhere over our table again, and for the first time i noticed that her bare arms were covered in wide, gaping mouths of slashed scars.
my little sister used to self-harm. i didn't know for how long, but she came to my room late one night, towel held over her arm and eyes huge, telling me it wouldn't stop bleeding and would i take her to the er? don't tell mom! i was eighteen, so i thought maybe i could sign for her? i had no idea what to do. how could i not tell mom? but i didn't want ella to not be able to trust me, either.
i hadn't realized she'd been wearing gloves and long-sleeved shirts more and more, all the time. her sleeve was up, then, and her arm was covered in white and pink and red scars against her light brown skin. the problem, when she showed me, was a wound that gaped wider, like a red mouth had opened in her arm, skin peeling back from the fat and meat underneath, visible for a second before it welled up blood again and she put the towel back.
i think she mostly stopped, after that. there's no way to take a sixteen-year-old to the er without your parents getting called, turns out. but that scared her. it scared me. i still remember that sight, too well.
so i know what it looks like, razor cuts, and these looked like that... but so much worse. how deep, how wide, must those wounds have been, to scar like that? she must not have gotten them treated at all.
sober, i probably wouldn't have commented. it's rude, right? plus, what are you supposed to say? but she had them so obviously on display.
"i'm sorry," i said, motioning to my arms. it seemed the most simple way to say it. sorry you were hurting. sorry you had to go through that. immediately i worried it might sound too vague, or condescending. "those must have hurt," i blundered.
she glanced down at her arms, almost... fondly?
"hmmm," she said. "yeah, they used to. i'm past that, though."
somehow, i was immediately convinced that she didn't mean she was past... cutting. what could she mean, though? different location? more medical treatment? all of them looked old, though, silvery white and shiny, just neat chunks as though someone had been taking fillets out of her.
i looked down at my plate, suddenly, and when i looked back up, she was kind of.... grinning. her teeth were even, shiny, and probably very white, but standing there in the slash of one of the red lights, they just looked... bloody.
"let me know if y'all need anything else," the chef said, and she was gone.
"damn," chris sighed.
"down," tia and kyle snapped at him.
i speared another chunk of meat, not sure why i was so suspicious. i mean, there's no way, right? she obviously still had all her limbs in working order, and it was too cliche, to pull a real-life sweeney todd, right? but i just... couldn't tell what kind of meat it was. and i'm a cook, too, right, okay, i know from cuts of meat. maybe i don't work anywhere fancy, but chicken, beef, and pork are pretty different, okay? and i couldn't tell what the fuck this was.
"what's wrong, dude?" kyle asked. "can't hold your liquor any more?"
"shame to waste this," chris teased. "hey, you gonna finish that?" i shook my head, silently, and let him take my plate. i couldn't say anything as i watched him eat it. what are you supposed to say? hey, don't eat that, i think it's people?
"we should head out," i tried, weakly. "i have to get up at five."
the chef appeared again. "everything all right?" she asked.
"it's great," chris enthused. kyle and even tia nodded. the chef looked like a smug cat.
"i'm glad," she said. "i take special pride in the quality of my ingredients. do you know the diet of an animal greatly affects the taste? it's the whole point of 'grass-fed' or 'corn-fed' designations. predators have a stronger, gamier taste."
"huh," chris said, though he's never cared when i talked food trivia before.
"meat's... a special treat. i'm mostly vegetarian nowadays, so it's nice to live vicariously," the chef said, still grinning. her mouth was too wide. the rings and studs through her lips looked like a cage around it.
"we should really... go," i tried again. "maybe the check?"
"no, no," she purred. "it's late. on the house. it's been a pleasure having you."
this, now, really freaked me out. tia immediately tried to argue; she's a suspicious soul, and there's nothing as suspicious as unexpected free shit, right? it's like you're being bought off.
"thanks," i said hurriedly, over her. "it was great, really," and i stood up so abruptly my chair screeched awfully across the floor. tia and kyle followed suit, frowning, and chris looked up stubbornly.
"what's the rush?" he asked.
"five a.m. alarm," i repeated.
"all right, all right," he said. "hey, i'll be back sometime," he asked the chef. "are you always open this late?"
"whenever you're hungry," she said.
we all left that night. i called in to work that morning. food poisoning, i said. i hadn't so much as gagged, drunk and full as i had been, as much as i'd half-heartedly tried, even. it was like my stomach didn't want to let go of the meat.
two days later, tia texted all of us to see if we could get a hold of chris. i tried texting, online, phoning. kyle went over to his place. he was gone.
so was the restaurant, when i found my way back there to check. there was just a blank, boarded-up storefront.
we reported chris missing, but the police haven't been able to find any evidence of foul play. i don't think i'm ever going to see him again, though. at least not in one piece.
i'm trying to stop eating meat, though. it's hard, when i keep remembering how it felt to sink my teeth into the tender chunks, and then i crave it again. but i can't really trust anything unless i saw the animal before it was fully butchered. i eat a lot of fish, now.
meat is.... a special treat.
statement ends.
word count: 2242
fandom: the magnus archives (os: original statement)
==================================
statement of joseph martinez, about an encounter with a pop-up restaurant in eugene, oregon.
statement begins:
i work in food. a bit snobby about it, if i'm being honest. my mother is a wonderful chef, and i remember the first time i stayed for dinner at a friends house, how i was so surprised and dismayed at the unseasoned chicken and limp salad that was all that was on offer. i didn't eat much that night; just enough to cover an eight-year-old's understanding of "enough to be polite."
my girlfriend, anna coleman, had just broken up with me that week, so my friends kyle reyes, chris easton, and tia ellis had demanded i go out with them, to take my mind off it. anna had just said that i was "too much of a doormat," for her, so i thought, what the hell, why not prove her right. i said okay, and that's how i ended up bar-hopping on a weekday night.
by the time we were done, it was two in the morning, and we were all too sloshed to see straight. so when tia says, "is that place new?" i decided that i needed to check it out. i love trying new restaurants, and eugene is supposed to be big on that "farm to table" idea, so there's always new little places trading out spaces as each one succeeds or fails. the fact that by this time of night, most of them aren't open anymore, did not occur to me until i'd already leaned into the door, and chris had to catch me before i fell into the place.
it smelled weird, was the first thing i noticed. like spices from too many different families, overwhelming and too complex. and under that, a musty, iron-and-salt smell like old steak, or blood. it was the strangest restaurant i'd ever been in; the lighting was more suited to a nightclub, directional cans slashing yellow-red-pink over the tables and floor. there were only, like, three tables in the entire place. it struck me as... odd, they could easily have fit more, little as it was. they just... hadn't used the space they had as efficiently as i knew a restaurant wanting to fit more customers could. i remember drunkenly considering offering this advice to the proprietors.
then something moved behind the counter that separated the dining area from a previously dark space i now realized was an open, in-view kitchen. for a moment, we all froze, somehow sure that we were about to be thrown out. or maybe something worse. i don't know. then the shadow came out from behind the hood, and resolved itself into a woman.
she was big, with bulky chef's muscles in her arms and shoulders, all of them and about a mile of cleavage put on display by the low-cut apron and tank top she was wearing. she had more piercings than any one person i'd ever seen, and long, messy black hair piled into a haphazard updo that my chefs would have a fit over, but she seemed to be the only one in the place, so maybe she cleaned up when food safety came around. in retrospect, that thought became laughable.
"hey, welcome. take a seat wherever you like," she said, almost disconcertingly normal when something about the place had me so unnerved. tia was even more nervous, shaking her head and hissing that it was too late, we shouldn't impose.
"you're still open?" i asked, just to check.
"of course," she said, "there is always the hunger."
that... seemed weird, the way she phrased that. but again, we were trashed. chris grabbed tia by the arm and dragged her all the way in, placed us at the table with the best view of the kitchen.
the smell only got stronger once we were all the way in, ginger and garlic and herbs, cinnamon and curry and soy, and under it all that dusty, coppery old-meat smell, overlaid with a hot sizzle of fat on a grill. it made my mouth water, now, though, instead of being sour and overwhelming. the lights seemed to get lower, more saturated, as we settled in. tia looked accusingly over the table at me and chris.
"holy shit," chris was saying. "do you think her boobs are real? there's no way. they don't look silicone, though."
"shut up, chris," kyle groaned.
"she can probably hear you," tia added in low hiss. neither of these stopped chris. i couldn't pretend to relate; i'm a "more than a handful's wasted," guy, you know? and something about the swell of her breasts seemed like... if you touched it, your hand would just sink into the flesh until it was eaten entirely. i think i blearily tried to explain this thought, but tia and kyle were unimpressed, and chris just leered and said it would be a way to go.
the chef brought us waters and asked with we'd like anything else to drink? i laughed lamely, said we'd already had enough "else" to drink, and the chef-- sam? sarah? she said her name was, or something, told us we should be careful we didn't "ruin" our livers. there was something about the way she said that.... but we all laughed and agreed, and then she was gone again. she didn't offer us a menu. there wasn't one on a board on the wall or anything, either, but she was gone.
we waited a while, i think. tia wanted to go; kyle, too, as he started to get a tiny bit more sober. chris and i were pretty set on this, though, if for different reasons, so we said they could leave without us if they wanted to, and tia settled down with a huff. kyle, on the other hand, kept getting more and more nervous. "are the lights changing? do you smell that?" he kept asking. chris told him to chill out.
abruptly, the chef-- sam? appeared through the hip-door at the counter, i don't know how long it had been. i was suddenly starving, despite the sheer amount of alcohol calories i'd had before. she set down a different dish for each of us, incongruous; some kind of orange curry or tikka masala for me. fried chicken or pork cutlet on rice for kyle, what looked like carnitas for chris, and jambalaya thick with chunks of meat for tia.
i should have been more confused than i was; we hadn't ordered any of this. at the time, i was too drunk and too hungry to ask questions. the curry wasn't quite like a masala, but not precisely anything else, not like you'd get at an actual indian restaurant. it was spicy, and too much, and i couldn't stop eating. the meat was tender and flaky, in too-large chunks, so you really had to sink your teeth into it. i thought it was pork? but it's a weird thing to have in a curry, or at least indian, so maybe chicken?
sarah (sam?) appeared out of nowhere over our table again, and for the first time i noticed that her bare arms were covered in wide, gaping mouths of slashed scars.
my little sister used to self-harm. i didn't know for how long, but she came to my room late one night, towel held over her arm and eyes huge, telling me it wouldn't stop bleeding and would i take her to the er? don't tell mom! i was eighteen, so i thought maybe i could sign for her? i had no idea what to do. how could i not tell mom? but i didn't want ella to not be able to trust me, either.
i hadn't realized she'd been wearing gloves and long-sleeved shirts more and more, all the time. her sleeve was up, then, and her arm was covered in white and pink and red scars against her light brown skin. the problem, when she showed me, was a wound that gaped wider, like a red mouth had opened in her arm, skin peeling back from the fat and meat underneath, visible for a second before it welled up blood again and she put the towel back.
i think she mostly stopped, after that. there's no way to take a sixteen-year-old to the er without your parents getting called, turns out. but that scared her. it scared me. i still remember that sight, too well.
so i know what it looks like, razor cuts, and these looked like that... but so much worse. how deep, how wide, must those wounds have been, to scar like that? she must not have gotten them treated at all.
sober, i probably wouldn't have commented. it's rude, right? plus, what are you supposed to say? but she had them so obviously on display.
"i'm sorry," i said, motioning to my arms. it seemed the most simple way to say it. sorry you were hurting. sorry you had to go through that. immediately i worried it might sound too vague, or condescending. "those must have hurt," i blundered.
she glanced down at her arms, almost... fondly?
"hmmm," she said. "yeah, they used to. i'm past that, though."
somehow, i was immediately convinced that she didn't mean she was past... cutting. what could she mean, though? different location? more medical treatment? all of them looked old, though, silvery white and shiny, just neat chunks as though someone had been taking fillets out of her.
i looked down at my plate, suddenly, and when i looked back up, she was kind of.... grinning. her teeth were even, shiny, and probably very white, but standing there in the slash of one of the red lights, they just looked... bloody.
"let me know if y'all need anything else," the chef said, and she was gone.
"damn," chris sighed.
"down," tia and kyle snapped at him.
i speared another chunk of meat, not sure why i was so suspicious. i mean, there's no way, right? she obviously still had all her limbs in working order, and it was too cliche, to pull a real-life sweeney todd, right? but i just... couldn't tell what kind of meat it was. and i'm a cook, too, right, okay, i know from cuts of meat. maybe i don't work anywhere fancy, but chicken, beef, and pork are pretty different, okay? and i couldn't tell what the fuck this was.
"what's wrong, dude?" kyle asked. "can't hold your liquor any more?"
"shame to waste this," chris teased. "hey, you gonna finish that?" i shook my head, silently, and let him take my plate. i couldn't say anything as i watched him eat it. what are you supposed to say? hey, don't eat that, i think it's people?
"we should head out," i tried, weakly. "i have to get up at five."
the chef appeared again. "everything all right?" she asked.
"it's great," chris enthused. kyle and even tia nodded. the chef looked like a smug cat.
"i'm glad," she said. "i take special pride in the quality of my ingredients. do you know the diet of an animal greatly affects the taste? it's the whole point of 'grass-fed' or 'corn-fed' designations. predators have a stronger, gamier taste."
"huh," chris said, though he's never cared when i talked food trivia before.
"meat's... a special treat. i'm mostly vegetarian nowadays, so it's nice to live vicariously," the chef said, still grinning. her mouth was too wide. the rings and studs through her lips looked like a cage around it.
"we should really... go," i tried again. "maybe the check?"
"no, no," she purred. "it's late. on the house. it's been a pleasure having you."
this, now, really freaked me out. tia immediately tried to argue; she's a suspicious soul, and there's nothing as suspicious as unexpected free shit, right? it's like you're being bought off.
"thanks," i said hurriedly, over her. "it was great, really," and i stood up so abruptly my chair screeched awfully across the floor. tia and kyle followed suit, frowning, and chris looked up stubbornly.
"what's the rush?" he asked.
"five a.m. alarm," i repeated.
"all right, all right," he said. "hey, i'll be back sometime," he asked the chef. "are you always open this late?"
"whenever you're hungry," she said.
we all left that night. i called in to work that morning. food poisoning, i said. i hadn't so much as gagged, drunk and full as i had been, as much as i'd half-heartedly tried, even. it was like my stomach didn't want to let go of the meat.
two days later, tia texted all of us to see if we could get a hold of chris. i tried texting, online, phoning. kyle went over to his place. he was gone.
so was the restaurant, when i found my way back there to check. there was just a blank, boarded-up storefront.
we reported chris missing, but the police haven't been able to find any evidence of foul play. i don't think i'm ever going to see him again, though. at least not in one piece.
i'm trying to stop eating meat, though. it's hard, when i keep remembering how it felt to sink my teeth into the tender chunks, and then i crave it again. but i can't really trust anything unless i saw the animal before it was fully butchered. i eat a lot of fish, now.
meat is.... a special treat.
statement ends.
