I’m having a working lunch at my neighborhood restaurant, and bar and plotting going steady. With the bar. As a freelancer with young children still at home, I split my work time between my house and not my house fairly equally. Coffee shops, the library, my car, waiting rooms, and sometimes a friend or sibling’s kitchen table. Whether it’s Michael, family, or a babysitter with my kids, it’s easier to get out of the house to focus. I’ve worked everywhere…except for bars, because, really, I want to have a good time there, not work. But in the last few months, the spot with the great patio, a quick bike ride away, reopened as a pizza place, and I decided to commit.  

Since my teens, I’ve been on the lookout for interesting, delicious, and unique places to eat and document. I don’t like the term foodie, but the shoe fits, and I am your girl to recommend a list of places I’ve been or want to go. I like supporting the locally-owned, with aligned values. The vegetarian places, the spots owned by not men, the cafes that make their own lavender syrup with locally grown lavender. And…I’m restless, obsessive, perhaps nursing undiagnosed ADHD.  

With decades flying by, I’m less interested in trying every new place. Instead, I want to be a regular at a handful of standout places run by kind people with high-quality and reliable offerings. I want to know the waiters’ names and for them to know my family and me. The bakery where I pick up my CSA. The coffee shop and wine shop that are owned by friends. The zine shop that’s owned by a friend. The bagel place where zine friends work. I shop, I chat, it makes my day. And this, in my mind, isn’t limited to indie shops as much as I love them. Whenever I shop at the behemoth Kroger-owned Fry’s, I see the same check-out folks who joke with my kids and wait patiently as I rummage through my bag for my wallet. A question I’ve been pondering is, “Do I want to go to the best place as defined by external metrics, or the place I like the best that fits into my life best?”

I felt anxious about showing up at the pizza place to work. What is normal at a coffee shop felt odd at a restaurant. But I asked the host if I could pull out my laptop and order lunch, and she waved me in reassuringly. The lunch special was $12 for two items, and my slice of cheese and house salad felt way more substantive than my usual coffee and pastry that costs basically the same.

I’ll still scan the newspaper for restaurant openings and follow the new coffee shop on Instagram, but newness no longer has the premium in my mind. I also have a more realistic idea of how many places I can support. Geographic and budget restraints are real and help me focus. I can’t go everywhere, but once I have a place I like, I’ll keep showing up and over time get to know the people who keep it going. Breaking through the screen of impersonal hospitality leads somewhere more interesting. Just let me be a regular and I’ll be happy.

Read my story, "Inventing a True Thing," in Tomato Tomato, a brand new magazine that Alicia Kennedy founded! I got to interview four of my food writing idols about their fiction projects. And then keep reading the rest of the first issue, it’s stacked with great stories.

Feminist Food Friend, Steph, is hosting Play with your food: A creative workshop with food/play/food on April 12. Tickets are on a sliding scale or FREE for paid subscribers (paywalled code at the end of this email. Reply with questions!)

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