there were no restaurants within close walking distance of the last house where we lived in Bloomington, which was south of town off a busy two lane road with no sidewalk or shoulder populated by big trucks going fast. the closest option was a Wendy’s a few miles away that i remember one time riding my bike to while tripping on LSD on a late summer afternoon and when i walked in, there was nobody sitting at the tables or behind the counter or visible in the restaurant or kitchen at all and i just kind of stood there in the strange Rapture silence for several moments and then eventually someone came out of the back to take my order.

i have a friend who makes the claim that Portland is the best food city in the US and i am not on the tourism board for this city nor well-traveled enough to reliably compare, but there is really great food here. the example i always cite for people is the first Thai restaurant i ate here at was the best Thai food i’d ever eaten in my life and then we ate at another Thai restaurant and that was some of the best Thai food i’d ever had in my life and this repeated through like 5 Thai restaurants. in Bloomington, we would drive an hour to Indianapolis to be able to access mediocre dim sum, which we were grateful for despite its mediocrity because the alternative was driving 4 hours to Chicago for good dim sum, which reminds me of the trip to do exactly that and go to the Art Institute where we got a flat tire on the way there and then got a different flat tire on the way back two days later. now, in the same shopping plaza as our favorite movie theater, just a few miles away from the couch where i am typing this, there is my favorite dim sum (because we have options here), perfect bánh mì, and a Chinese mall with a breakfast pop-up that sells the most transcendent bricks of hash brown known to man. yes i have gained weight in recent years.

right when we first moved here, overjoyed to now be living in a walkable city, i was looking at Google Maps and Yelp to determine what the closest restaurant to our house was and found that it was a Mexican place with a large outdoor patio six blocks away. the idea of having a Mexican restaurant with a large outdoor patio just a few minutes walk away filled me with joy. as we strolled over there for the first time, on a warm and sunny Saturday morning, i began to fantasize about having a local, about being a regular, about all the things that were going to be new about our lives here as represented by this restaurant, which would now become “ours.” we arrived and were seated on the patio, the vibes were lively but not loud, and i was living the dream.

and then the food was fucking horrible and i swore i’d never eat there again lmao. horrible food has in the past often been a source of conflict between Deborah and i even though our tastes are very harmonious; the conflict is usually not about the food itself (save for the one time in which i unintentionally took too large a portion of a share plate) but about talking about it. i generally hate to be perceived by others in the world (outside of this newsletter, my Instagram stories, and spending time with my friends) and feel particularly uncomfortable saying that food is bad inside the restaurant where i am eating the bad food they have served me. Deborah has felt unhappily surprised to believe i am enjoying a meal we are sharing while we share it and then after we pay the bill and then we get outside, i’m like “wow that sucked soooo much” it feels invalidating and dissonant.

i eventually came up with a workaround for this problem, which I call the Chicago tactic. years ago, on one trip to Chicago, we went to a new Rick Bayless fast-casual popup restaurant. we were hungry, it was late, and i was so excited to try it. when we got our dinner, it was just awful: spice without flavor, over-salted. to try to extract something good from that tragedy, now, when we’re in a restaurant and i don’t like the food but i also don’t want to say “this sucks,” instead, i say, in a neutral voice, “You know, this kind of reminds me of that place in Chicago.” (one of multiple Wilco-titled restaurants in the Portland metro area is the nearby pizzeria “Via Chicago”, which I haven’t tried and so don’t intend to catch strays).

since this Mexican restaurant i have shunned for six years is so close to our house—we’ve lived in the same rental the entire time we’ve lied here—we very often walk by it, seeing many people who seem to be enjoying themselves. after doing my bit of hating the restaurant for so long (i love to commit to a bit so hard and long that’s what she said), this summer, i found myself, to my surprise, wanting to give it a second chance. i generally think of myself as someone who has strong opinions and expresses them with vigor. often too much vigor; recently, we screened Halsey’s “film” If I Can’t Love, I Want Power and after it was over i started my review with “that was the worst fucking thing i’ve ever seen in my life” which was not a nice thing to say about the adaptation of an album Deborah loves, even as it served as an inarguable additional proof for my subway take which is that musical artists should be legally barred from directing their own videos.

but also, i feel that i am capable of changing my mind about things. sometimes that change is internally driven (i wasn’t into Anna Karenina until the summer i picked it up when it was the perfect book for that particular version of me) and for this restaurant, externally, i was also thinking about how much could have changed in six years including a pandemic. maybe i hated the version of this restaurant i had eaten at, but i also had to acknowledge it was possible that the place had been entirely Ship of Theseus’d in terms of cooks and might be better now.

so we went with T on Wednesday evening and tl;dr, it was fine! it was not the best restaurant i’d ever eaten at but certainly not the worst and i had chips and salsa and guac and a Pacifico and some shrimp tacos in the sunshine on what is likely to be one of the last warm days of the year with people i love and it was a nice time and i’d go there again! i’m glad i tried it.

Weekend recs

• this newsletter will always be an Emily Gould stan account and she just published something sooooo good that you have to read about trying to be able to cry again

• we finally watched Pillion (HBO Max), which i so loved! the tenderness and vulnerability of the protagonist and the complicated dynamics of his sadomasochistic relationship were moving and the presentation was so intimate (which “intimacy” goes way beyond the depictions of sex, though i also appreciate those and that there was an unrated version). Harry Meling was an incredible surprise and, unsurprisingly, Alexander Skarsgård completely committed to being that kind of asshole and was incredible. in particular, i fucking cracked up when the scene cut to him sitting on a couch in his apartment reading Knausgård wearing what George Civeris, in one of the Patreon podcast feeds I happily pay extra for, called “his cunty little glasses.” the movie also has a perfect coda that left me in just the state i wanted to be in after the rupture of the climax.

• video game recommendation of the week is to play a game, any game, in slow motion. in my experience, this is particularly transcendent with the recent remasters of the Tony Hawk games: go into the settings, and turn the game speed down as low as possible. i find it makes the experience soothing and my virtual skater becomes capable of such incredible feats when not constrained by my reflexes. This experience pairs well with drugs, but does not require them (it’s its own drug)

• gorgeous letter from Deborah last week about how to dream (about fashion) (view it on your computer, not your phone!). i also enjoyed reading Evie unpacking packing and Brandon Taylor finding his way through labyrinth.

• bathe in the sound of “Far Away” by the Avalanches, John Glacier, and Khadija Al Hanafi and feel it in your heart, in your heart