Fountain Dinners and "Hole-in-Walls"

Recently we enjoyed a gourmet dinner at our favorite restaurant. An outdoor picnic at a fountain in the downtown area of our fair city. There's nothing like this for a romantic setting:  a warm breeze, twilight settling in over skyscrapers, bypassers to "people watch" (a wedding party this most recent time), and, of course, the wonderful sound of a fountain splashing.

I have to admit I'm not a big fan of expensive restaurants. Not that I can afford them anyway, but the few times we've had a not-to-be-wasted-buy-one-get-one-free coupon or a gift card, I've found it stressful. Stressful because this is a "big event" and I must choose just the right menu item to make the evening simply as spectacularly enjoyable as possible. Maybe this comes from growing up in a family where we did not go out to eat (did anyone in my generation?), and from living on a fixed income.  I might also add, (and not to sound pious or judgemental at all, please) that having lived amidst poverty in a 2/3 world country, it does give one pause to spend a lot of money putting food in your stomach.

All that aside, it's not to say I don't enjoy a good meal out. But my favorite memories are of those--what we call--"hole in a wall" little places. They may not look so pretty, but the food is usually good (and cheap), and the atmosphere, a little quirky at best, is memorable. (Isn't that what a lot of it is about?)

Some of my favorite restaurant memories:  our literal tea-in-a-wall in Bath, England--just a cozy tea shop in the wall of a bridge (pictured above) ; a marvelous but tacky Greek restaurant tucked at the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge; ham and eggs at a Pennsylvania diner; a sweaty 

sandwich on a damp table overlooking a gushing river; and a dark Greek restaurant opening onto a sunlit, crowded Amsterdam street (where they started us out with a tiny cleanse-your-palette-zinger). Memorable too is the pizza palace in a small basement in Arad, Romania; a cave-like hamburger place in Chicago where our footsteps on the stone floors were softened by a carpet of peanut shells; a roadside "chop bar" in Ghana––we sat on low stools alongside others, eating with our fingers out of a common stew pot; the lush tropical interior of the Casa Bonita in Denver––on the hour a waiter dives over a waterfall into a pool way down below; and my most favorite here at home--a Mexican restaurant that is so incredibly cozy and neighborly, we are drawn to go back again.

Some think we're strange ("we" includes the Gardener, as he favors the same things), and it may confirm our kids' suspicions that we "were (or are?)  hippies,"  but this is how we are. An cliche-type ending would be:  "The 'best of all' is our table here at home, and true it is." A little candlelight and some cloth napkins go a long way to memory-ville, especially with the wealth that I call friends gathered around our table with us, usually for a meal we all have a part in. Richness, indeed.