The Food of Our Forefathers

We all hold on to summer in different ways. I can’t recite a sappy list, because I don’t really know what other people do to pay homage to the sappiest of seasons, and to be brutally honest, I’ve no ritual myself. I’ve been sojourned in this city my entire life, and at the end of every summer I find myself piously stuck to working whatever job I have without making plans to travel or camp or cottage. So this morning as I rose, late as usual, and partial to the idea of going out for Korean I thought to myself, how in the world could I honor the readers that give my meanderings through food land the once over, especially when they find themselves back in the cool, sweaty grip of fall, creeping a couple weeks away? What was cliché and summery? Sappy, yet aestival? (That also means summery.)

Hamburgers.

That was my answer. I pride myself on my own gastronomic sense- how I can write about food and make it culturally poignant, and not only an issue of mere eating for the sake of saving money and filling stomachs? If you find yourself starting school and saddened by that fact, yearning for the previous months you spent not going to school know that this review is here for you. Let it warm the cockles of your summertime heart (there’s a phrase I’ll use again). I’ll even join in the nostalgic fun.

When I was a young adherent of the Dane Cook of martial arts (that’s Karate, for those of you unfamiliar with the way of the fist), it was a ritual of my father and I after every class, every Saturday morning to visit Sonny’s Drive-In: a hamburger joint. Now, I don’t think my father brought me because he really thought long and hard about how much I’d love hamburgers. I think it was just a way for him to visit the owner (whom I’ve come to know as Sonny, though that name is no part of his identity at all), one of his many friends in the food business. If I had any memory of the place it was of my strange attachment to the nameless arcade I would always play. If memory serves, I operated as some big, hyper-masculine shirtless blonde man wrestling tigers in a coliseum. I never got further than that. But I played it. Every weekend. After every class I more or less got a whooping in.

That was some twenty years ago. Now, as an old man, and anonymous, and without my father, I found myself venturing there, thinking about how good the hamburgers must be, because the otherwise outmoded lot that is Sonny’s Drive-In is still getting business to this day. I know this because I’ve always been around, passing it by, observing.

Although I didn’t expect the place to change in the least, I at least expected someone there to happily greet me. That is how I biasly constructed the memory of my past. So, if anything changed, it may have been Sonny’s disposition, because he was still there, working hard and serving customers, older than ever; now in the company of a faceless employee working the fryers and decked out in a white uniform reminiscent of Americana’s hamburger shop past. Yes, everything was the same. The steel counter, the sneeze guard glass where you’d choose the toppings for whatever hamburger or hot dog you wanted to eat, the red tile, the glowing menu board where clip-on letters and numbers were used to spell out items and their prices, even the chocolate shake machine was still running, albeit eerily. The arcades were different though, and the ceiling too: brown painted faux wood floorboards now lay overhead.

There’s nowhere to sit in the place, only a legless table attached to the glass wall that looks out onto the modern world where one can stand and eat, and maybe cry over the fact that they can’t be part of a more nostalgic, genuine, naïve time when Marty McFly got his mom to fall in love with him.

Whatever.

For me, Sonny’s was a scary place. I’ve never been more intimidated ordering a hamburger and fries and soda in archaic cup. Though customers were coming and going, ordering food and telling me I wouldn’t be sorry, I could tell I was getting on the helps’ nerve critically looking over a menu that ran the gamut from hamburger to hot dog to fish and chips to scallops and fries (probably the most intriguing choice on the menu). And you’d be hard pressed to really find any kind of deal or combination plate like the ones that accompany most burger joints. You just pick and choose from the menu and whatever the cost is, the cost is. Still, it was a little cheaper than most conventional places. And with that, I placed my order, and took Sonny’s taking my dirty money and handling my burger thereafter as a sign not of poor standards, but of his tender regress to a safer time in our forefathers’ history when food sanitation wasn’t a big deal.

Again. Whatever.

So, a little standoffish, I went along the line, chose my toppings, had my items placed in a greasy paper bag and went outside to the weathered picnic tables, imprinted with the word ‘Sonny’s’ and carved hearts with monikers such as ‘Dave + Sarah’, and ‘F and A Forever.’ I could only imagine how hard my food would be to stomach.

Now, there are typical things to expect when eating a hamburger; charred, savoury meat paddies; soft, starch ridden buns. Usually, these generalizations are found with every plain paddy when eating out. I expected it with mine. However, there were some flavours I just couldn’t understand. Like a paddy that seemed a little sour, and pickles that were rubber, and all too squeaky. If not for these characteristics I may have very well said my hamburger was okay, but that there was nothing special about it. Still, in a city with so many places offering the good ground round, the only thing that may make Sonny’s burgers sellable might be patriotism and some notion that its hamburgers are somehow authentic, having earned their burgery place after so long.

The fries too were typical fare, though I admit better than the fast food chains we’re used to going to. Not scrawny and brittle in the least, but hardy and firm, crunchy if eaten immediately out of the fryer. But again, this is matched by so many. If there was one bit of serendipity about them it may have been the flecks of batter that managed to land in my box (runoff from the fingers of deep fried fish). This was something I thoroughly enjoyed, though unintended, obviously, by the cooks.

Maybe I was trying to recapture the past, or maybe I created the memory that my past was pretty dope, though I can’t for the life of me remember how stellar the food at Sonny’s was, and maybe there’s a reason for that. After all, twenty years ago, Sonny was a lot younger, and so was I. Perspective certainly may have been lacking. Now, I was a mere bald stranger. Certainly, I could have reminded him who I was, but why break an old man’s heart? More importantly, why break mine, especially if he didn’t care? For now, I’ll pretend Sonny is a man who loves the people he serves, not a man who can’t retire because his food shows no greater competitive value.

Sonny's Drive-In
(519) 884-1750
256 Weber St N Waterloo,
ON N2J 3H6

ANY PAYMENT

SUN-THURS 10 am – 1 am

FRI-SAT 10 am – 3 am

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The Immutable Drive For Ramen

*RESTAURANT CLOSED*


Sometimes I have to remind myself that food is just food. That if things go south, no problem. It's just food. It's a mindful exercise I constantly find myself practising, usually after getting bent out of shape over something culinary. I could sit and stew for hours, but I know it's never productive. I just have to move on to the next thing. My mother tells me a large part of cooking is experimenting, so it's bound to go bad the majority of the time. Understandable. But it's hard to take me ma'am seriously when her cooking's some of the most frustrating stuff in my culinary world. An Italian mother bad at cooking? Hey, nobody's perfect. She has her off days. Lately, it seems more than usual. After careful consideration I think it's a mere symptom of my family's being raised to be polite to the chef and just respectfully say the food tastes good- either that, or everyone has a terrible palette. Alas, all I can do is bite my tongue, because no amount of reminders to my mother: that she should write a recipe down to remember it, or that she shouldn't try to cook so much things at once because she always ends up burning something, or that the elements on our stupid five billion dollar poser gas stove are so small they can never bring water to a boil, will ever influence any active change in her. She claims her chicken stock is good, but when its cooled and there's 2 inches of yellow fat like a sheet of ice on the top and a nimbus of chicken slurry on the bottom and dark amber stock between the both, it makes you wonder how put together a stock is when it separates to such a disturbing degree.

Food in my family is too political; if criticism is offered it's not constructive, its only used to show the person who didn't cook how theoretically better they would have made it. Maybe for all of us- I know certainly for me- culinary know how seems to be the only cultural capital I have as of late. And even then it's pretty sub-standard. Yes, food and I have a personal vandetta. Because if I can't wrestle it into tasteful submission, I somehow take it as a sign that I'm becoming weaker, falling apart, losing an arbitrary battle I decided to fight one fateful arbitrary day years ago. Cooking is, after all, how I justify my civility. Who needs to make a torte, really?
But what's a dude to do? Move on with his life? Not this noodle slinging, kung food adherent. Oh no. I just eat more bitter. I stubbornly research, ask around, patiently wait for opportunity. Conventionally, it's admired. We love seeing things work out for our heroes. We never hear stories in popular culture of our heroes waiting without having things work out for them in the end. Samuel Beckett wrote a play where just that happened. He was praised for it. But if the majority of tales were like that, eaters would be hatin' yo. Nobody wants to see that. I certainly don't want to hear that, not after 5 years of attempting to make my own noodles. Pasta, no problem. I'm unmatched. But chewy, bouncy, voluptuous Asian noodles? Ramen or Chinese, or soba? Forget it. My culinary kryptonite. I just can't make the stuff, even after trying for years. Soba, I can kinda do, but it's not good enough. My ramen's too bitter, and my lo mian too boring. What's worse? I have no standard to measure it against. A good cook learns by eating; and the better the culinary environment, the better a shot he has at making something outstanding. The problem with Kitchener-Waterloo, in my opinion, and, at least, from the perspective of East Asian cuisine, is that there is no sense of competition. Everything more or less tastes the same, and no one says a thing. Cooks don't try to out do themselves, there's no need to, because there's always a whole slew of university students in this town to eat, with undeveloped palettes and a general dismissal for good tasting food. They don't care, just so long as their bellies are full. It's heartbreaking. For me anyway, because what it means is that I'm gastronomically sojourned. Can I find ramen to eat in this town? only at one place. Is it worth eating? I'm disappointed to say, no.

I've been peering the option in the window for a good 4 months, telling my closest ramen supporting friend about it, but he only deterred me. He said immediately it wouldn't be good, and my logical gastronomic self was apt to believe him, but the adventurous part of me said to throw caution to the window, as I foolishly do. So when I had 10 dollars to junk, I went for it, and let me tell you: there was nothing good about it. You thought I discovered something great, didn't you? Nope. Not in this city. There are no ramen aficionados. I might be the closest one. I'm the only one who, in the heat of the night, tries to make the damned noodles. Never the stock though. One step at a time.

So let me break it down. The noodles: instant. The broth: a mixture of the ramen packet that comes with the instant noodles and the restaurant's own, dare I say, mediocre chicken broth. How could I tell? The stock had the salty, artificial flavour so familiar of so many instant cups. It wasn't a good, savoury saltiness, like something you'd get from say, cheese. And to add insult to injury, the presentation was a little mash-up of small, chopped, cubed ingredients in a soupy bowl of noodles that, after sitting for a bit, absorbed the stock and became slimy and stodgy (shit, no I didn't). The noodles, like a sack of sand, refused to move in the bowl, though they certainly had the room when the piping hot, promising dish came to me at the beginning.


There were no separate morsels, no slices of meat, lone egg, fish cakes, or tender vegetables decorated around the bowl. It was like someone took Shanghai noodles (the favoured dish of mixed chopped ingredients left over, stir-fried with noodles and slammed on a plate- usually delicious, though humble) and threw it in a bowl of soup. That's right. It had all the characteristics of Asian stir-fry: scrambled egg, diced vegetables, saturated flavour. Let's face it, that's not creative. Not in the least, because you know as well as I know that that kind of old stir-fried rice characteristic is the symptom (that's right, twice in one entry) of a terrible, Chinese-Canadian-American-Othering culinary past; one with a residue I wish never to have cover my meal. But alas, there it was.

That wasn't sweat the waitress saw on my face when she asked me if the soup was too spicy, it was frustration. Will anyone ever care? Will there ever be a cook who shakes the culinary scene of Kitchener-Waterloo?

It's just food Weezee, it's just food.


(Oh, and I won't bother to tell you where to get the stuff, out of sympathy for the place, and the fact that it's the only place that sells a dish labeled ramen. So when you find it, you'll find it... and in all fairness, it was a bold move after all to even attempt to offer it. Wait, did I just answer my question? IS this an example of someone shaking the culinary world? Phh. Yeah right.)

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Eating with Uncle

I think I eat anything. When my uncle asks me if I eat something I usually say I do, and my cousin blithey interrupts, 'Weezee eats everything.' And I agree with her. That is, I assume I eat everything without ever really considering if I eat everything. Sometimes I never give things the attention they deserve. I mean, there are things I don't like to eat, and probably won't even bother trying for whatever gastronomic prejudice, and when I say I eat anything, I guess I don't really pay attention to those kinds of things. So when my uncle positioned half the skull of a goat in front of me, it was one of those times when I thought to myself, 'Hmph, I guess I don't eat everything.' Or want to. Out of respect for my uncle however, I chose to be a little liberal- a tiny bit liberal, because when I plucked a piece of brain from the shell of that thing it took a lot of teasing for me to give way. So much so in fact, that if my uncle hadn't teased that he thought I said I ate everything, I probably wouldn't have tried the mush. If he hadn't spun a fork in front of me like a gun with one bullet in its chamber I probably wouldn't have had the urge to play chicken and save a little face.

So there it was; in my mouth. Pressed between my jaws and smoothed out into a paste with my tongue. I tried to chew it. It was certainly soft enough, but at that moment it was hard not to gag. I've read enough to know that being disgusted by what I was eating is a little juvenile and bougie (though that word in this context is itself a paradox); but for whatever reason I couldn't help it. It may have been because I likened the flavour to fish that went sour.

I thought I was done, but after having gathered my things to leave and happily putting my fork in the sink, wondering how in the world something so gross is considered a delicacy- sweet breads, you know?-, my uncle pointed to the mouth of the thing and told me that, there was the tongue and you've eaten beef tongue before so you can eat this. I was backed into a corner yet again, and before I could say anything, I had a piece of the organ thrust between my fore finger and thumb by the knife that had scraped it out of the thing's dead jaw. If it reminded me of anything, it was the texture of a well stewed chicken; and the flavour wasn't too bad, like an off beef. A lot of off stuff today.

But it was neither of those two characteristics that made me rush to the back and hide behind the counter pretending to chew it and spitting as much of it as I could into the garbage. No, no. It was the teeth that somehow found their way onto that piece of tongue and into my mouth. I remembered Guenther's stories about his exploits with his father in the African bush and how they were constantly treated to boiled ox skull, shards of whatever being in the meat. My meal, I thought, was much more glamorous, and probably tasted somewhat better. But I'll never know. I also imagined that this was right up their with being a serial killer- for some brief moment, I thought that's must be what it felt like. Then again, I wouldn't know. I did know one thing, however; eating with my uncle is always an adventure, and it's these things that bring me back to kitchens time and time again, because it certainly isn't the pay.

-w

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