Revenge of the Meatloaf

Beware the notion of comfort food or the term "home style cooking."

A Meatloaf dinner and a slice of Debbie's strawberry-rhubarb pie. That's what I thought I wanted. It sounded less challenging than the baby-back ribs and more adventurous than breakfast at 7pm.

The giant white diner plate arrived under my nose after half of my large Dr.Pepper was gone. It was mostly what I expected. There was the veggie portion: steaming bright green broccoli surrounded by a couple of wagon wheels of carrot, some tumbleweeds of cauliflower, and one shriveled green pea. Adjacent to, but not touching were the mashed potatoes: mysteriously white, without a hint of garlic, even though the menu had described them as garlic mashed potatoes. Next to which was the meatloaf: 2-inches x 2-inches x 4-inches; a brick of ground meat with hardened edges and crusts through which steaming fissures of brownish meat were visible. There was no gravy, but I was given a ramekin of BBQ sauce, and a serrated knife, which I presumed, at first, might be required for self-defense.

The knife came in handy as the meat-brick refused to give in without a fight. I used the mash potatoes as spackle, which smoothed out the rough edges of the meat, and I used the sauce as a lubricant, to help get it down. Much to my surprise, the veggies turned out to be the most flavorful part of the dinner. In the end, even though I was full, I was left with the taste of no taste in my mouth. That's when the pie called out to me. I had been told many times that people come here just for the pie. Now, I'd be willing to wager the sentence reads more like, people come here "only" for the pie.

It was a wonderful slice of pie and the waitress served it with a pretty ruffle of whipped cream from a can tucked in behind its backbone of crust. She also served it with a long parfait spoon that had previously been used to dislodge an ice jam in a blender and which now had two very jagged dings on either side of its shallow bowl. The first spoonful yielded a burst of flavor to my tongue and a couple of small abrasions to my upper lip for a sweet-sour-blood thing. When I pointed out the spoon problem to the waitress she deducted the pie from the bill.

As I walked out of the diner at 8pm, distended and distressed, I could not have predicted how the Dr.Pepper, broccoli, and meat would suddenly find their flavor at 2AM.

I should have gone with the breakfast.