My all-time favorite book of food essays is not by MFK Fisher, Jeffrey Steingarten, or A.J. Liebling. It’s by a Canadian reporter named John Allemang. _The Importance of Lunch_ (which is out of print in the US but can easily be found on [Bookfinder](http://bookfinder.com/) or [Amazon.ca](http://www.amazon.ca/)) features a number of remarkably unstuffy pieces about food and modern life. It’s impossible to imagine a write more down-to-earth than Allemang, who is opinionated (he loves to make fun of the tall food chefs were assembling in the 90s) but also understanding. He’s got kids who are picky eaters. He gets it.

It’s one of those books you can pick up any time and open to any page and be struck by some understated insight. I was reading it on the bus the other day and opened to this passage about Chinese food:

> An essential of modern urban life, as far as I can tell, is having a Chinese takeout restaurant to call one’s own. The joint you dial up on a Saturday night, when you don’t feel like the sameness of your own cooking, should have a place in your heart–or at least a menu under your fridge magnet.

This made me sad, because I don’t have a Chinese local. I have a few Chinese restaurants that I love, and none of them deliver to my house. In fact, the closest Chinese restaurant that I really like (Sichuanese Cuisine Restaurant) is two miles away.

There is a Chinese restaurant nearby in the form of Broadway Wok & Grill. I used to go there back when it first opened, and they had a pork and garlic sauce dish that was notable for its generous amount of vegetables. But since they expanded into the space next door and turned it into an extremely offputting bar, the food seems to have gone downhill–though I haven’t actually tried it in over two years. Maybe I need to give them another chance. They deliver, though the minimum order is $20 (and they’re only six blocks away). Iris is so impressed by pizza delivery that she might actually swoon if rice comes knocking.

What’s your local?

**Update:** After posting this, I remembered that one of my other favorite food writers, Steven Shaw, once wrote a eulogy for his local:

> Hunan K was not a good Chinese restaurant, or even a mediocre Chinese restaurant. I would characterize it as a bad Chinese restaurant, though I don’t mean that in a bad way. Having grown up with bad Chinese food, I find that certain perverse examples of it — egg foo yung smothered in gelatinous brown gravy; day-glo red sweet-and-sour chicken — bring me comfort. I’m gratified that Shanghai, Teochew, and other regional Chinese cuisines are now expressing themselves in America, but I’d be sorry to see the bad Chinese restaurant breed die out.

Someone searched MSN for the following topic and ended up on R&G. I hope it wasn’t urgent.

> child eaten by lobster

Most of the stuff I write is pretty lighthearted, but sometimes I turn in a story so hard-hitting that the rest of the local media can’t help but be swept along in the tide of newsworthiness.

That was the case last week. As I mentioned, I recently held a chocolate chip tasting for Seattle Magazine. Today Laurie picked up the Seattle Weekly and found this in a column by Knute Berger:

> But both publications [Seattle Magazine and Seattle Metropolitan] offer some substance between stories about Seattle’s most eligible singles and the search for the city’s best chocolate chips.

By now, Berger has probably seen my latest column, which is about shrimp. Are shrimp more substantial than chocolate chips? Pick up the Weekly and stay on top of this story.

Today Iris and I went down to Pike Place Market because we needed some slab bacon from Bavarian Meats. Iris remembered that last time we went there I bought her a chocolate umbrella. Iris does not forget candy. But this time she got something more memorable.

Here’s how things go every time I go to Bavarian Meats, which has the best non-Nueske’s bacon in town and sells it for $5.25/lb. Every time I go in for slab bacon, I have an amusing exchange with the women behind the counter. I say, “Give me a pound of slab bacon in one chunk.” They say, “I don’t know how much a pound is until I cut it, so it might be more or less.”

One time she showed me where she was going to cut, and I asked for a little more. It came to a pound and a quarter. The next time I let her cut, and it was exactly a pound. This time I asked for half a pound and she cut a pound. I’ll use it.

We got the bacon and a chocolate umbrella and a Kinder Egg, and then the lady gestured at Iris and said to me, “Vould she like a viener?”

I said, “I’ll be she would.”

She gave Iris a cold hot dog from the case. Iris loved it, of course. She ate half of it even though we’d just had an apple fritter from Three Girls Bakery. Plus, now I can make her laugh by saying, “Vould you like a viener?”

Local sex columnist Dan Savage is also a Bavarian Meats fan:

> I love their brats and sausages. And the large German ladies who work there are sweet and gruff–my two favorite, highly contradictory German traits.

> They’re mean-ish until you’re a proven regular. Then they’ll do anything for you. Kinda like the guy I dated when I lived in Germany.

When we got home Laurie told Iris that next time she’s offered a free wiener, she should say, “Ja!” in an operatic way.

When you receive your plate at a restaurant, do you give it a little turn before you start eating? Me too. Give it whatever evolutionary psychology-inspired reason you like; it’s just one of those cute quirks of human nature.

I just noticed that I do something similar when I order at the counter. This morning I got a cup of tea and a slice of coffeecake. The guy put them on the counter. I handed over a five, and while he was getting my change, I quickly reached for the cup and the plate and pulled them toward myself about an inch. “This was your stuff a second ago, but now it’s mine,” I seemed to be saying.

Now I’m watching to see if other people do the same thing. The woman at the counter now just did it. I’m glad I wasn’t buying something heavy, like a refrigerator.