There's only so much you and your boo can do in your apartment and after you've done them all, you need to go out and get something to eat.
I had a couple chicken breasts in the crock with red wine vinegar and distilled white vinegar with lemon, honey, kosher salt, red pepper, cumin, paprika, and - hold on. Hold on. He's going to do it. He's going to do it. Hold on to something. Oh, shit. He's doing it! He's doing it! - crushed hibiscus. Those would be ready to shred in a few hours and ultimately cover in barbecue sauce. (Fifty-fifty Famous Dave's Sweet & Sassy and Devil's Spit, left over from Kath's sister's wedding reception. Needed to use them somehow. I'm an Open Pit man. I'm from Ohio. We don't much fuck with anything else.)
ANYway! We needed to just get out, go for a little drive. Kath wants to hit up the ice cream shop where I once got the The Shit Just Got Serious cone but they were closed. Kath is bummed. It's a seventy degree Saturday, she just wants a goddamned ice cream cone. There was never anything in the literature regarding this plague bullshit that said she couldn't have a goddamned ice cream cone.
We keep driving on a bit of an amble, trying to think of what we want because we could both use a light bite before going home and having a proper dinner. We eventually find ourselves at Nokomis Beach Cafe. Kath asks, "What's this?"
I tell her, "Oh! This place is alright."
"What do they do?"
"Coffees. Sandwiches. Remember when I was going through my chai phase? When I was doing the pollotarian thing?"
"Yeah."
"Yeah, I got a chai tea and a turkey sandwich from there one time and ate it down at the lake."
Kath says OK, let's give that a try. So we strap on our masks and get out of the car and that's when I see the chairs on the tables and I wonder, "Are they closed or are they doing pickup only?" And we see the sign on the door.
"... due to COVID-19..."
Closed. OK, so we go back to the car, passing a family of three eating Chipotle that we initially mistook for Nokomis Beach Cafe at the outdoor seating area and the shirtless sunburnt father is talking about jacking off and beating off.
Charming.
And that's coming from me. You know the nasty shit I talk.
So Kath and I are trying to figure out where to go next and I'm racking my brain because the name is on the tip of my tongue and finally it springs from my brain to my tongue, "Clancey's!"
Kath asks about that, I tell her about that, and ask her if she wants to drive (from the east side of Lake Nokomis) to the south side of Lake Harriet.
We get to Clancey's, idle in the ten minute Curbside Pickup Only zone and they're doing the simplest curbside you can think of: You call in the order. They make the order. They put the order on a cart outside the door with your name on it. You can't get simpler than that.
Kath picks turkey, I pick beef, I call it in.
They're out of bread.
Motherfucker.
OK, so they're out of bread. That's OK. That's a good thing. That means business is still bopping.
OK. Kath asks about Broder's.
So I look up Broder's and we can order for pickup and we look at the manu and I call the number and an automated voice tells me to press one number for delivery (delivery?) and another for pickup so I hit the number for pickup and I get another automated voice that tells me to install a fucking app rather than just letting me to talk to a person on the phone that I am calling them on right now. I hang up, tell Kath about the toxin that had just been pumped into my ear, and we agree: Fuck it. Let's go get a little Happy Meal or something from McDonald's. It's cheap, it's not filling but it'll tide us over.
Kath Google Maps us to the closest Mickey D's and we come upon it just as it starts to rain and Kath is all, "Oh, shit. I didn't know we'd be this far out."
I ask, "This far out?"
She says, "This is like Edina."
And my shitty boyfriend brain activates because a week ago, I was teasing Kath about going to another chain deli: Schlotzsky's. It's in Edina. It's running on limited hours. It's something I was OK with never going to but now I have to know about the Schlotzsky's because, for the life of me, I can't remember ever being there. Kath razzes me briefly about the Quizno's incident - she won't let me forget because I won't let her let me forget - and we ditch McDonald's for unknown territory. We pull into an abandoned parking lot, Kath looks at the menu, I call in the order. I order the Original and Kath gets the Bacon Grilled Cheese, each of us gets a medium Diet Coke.
• • •
So we finally get back to the apartment which reeks of vinegar, B.T. Dubs, and we take our styrofoam buckets of Diet Coke out to the back porch. Kath isn't in the mood to tell me shit about her sandwich. She's hungry. I told her in the car that the guy who brought our food out said they were out of avocado so he hooked her up with extra bacon. She was fine with that. Now it was time to eat. And I could not have agreed more. After all, check the fucking scoreboard: Closed. Closed. Out Of Bread. Voicemail Defers To An App. About To Rain. Let's just goddamned eat.
That could be the Schlotzsky's slogan: Let's Just Goddamned Eat.
The same with Subway. Subway: Because You're Tired of Driving.
As previously mentioned, I got the Original, listed as:
Lean smoked ham with genoa & cotto salamis, cheddar, mozzarella & parmesan cheeses, black olives, red onion, lettuce, tomato, mustard and our signature sauce. Served on our toasted house-made sourdough bun.
Two kinds of salami!? Don't hold back! I don't know, it was OK. The sourdough was spongy-er than I'm used to. The yellow mustard overpowered everything including whatever the fuck "signature sauce" is. You got three kinds of salted pork product and two are the same kind, you're supposed to differentiate between them? Three cheeses? I've made the argument before that it just tastes like dairy when you do that.
Kath's grilled cheese came with a little tomato soup on the side which further research reveals is supposed to be a "tomato-basil dipping sauce". That explains why she said, after the first spoonful, that it tasted like spaghetti sauce.
But now my curiosity is sated and I've reported back to you what this shit is and next time Kath and I are just going to hit the Arby's drive-thru.
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