It's just that today's lunch experience reminds me.
After Church, I decided I needed a little "alone time" to take a little walk and maybe stop at one of the many restaurants along Sunset for a nibble. At the risk of enraging the inhabitants of most of these United States, I do have to add that this was another of several summer like winter days--the whole nine yards, warm breeze, blue sky and sparrows chirping with abandon in trees small and large.
I passed by the Griddle Café because the number of twenty and thirty somethings waiting was littering the sidewalk. And while I have been there once or twice before, I have to wonder what they are selling, because the food is fine but not extraordinary. Not chicken. I had a little wine and cheese and hors d'oeuvres thing last night for a few friends and one of the Gelson's catering items were large skewers of cashew encrusted chicken. Yummy indeed, but enough chicken for a few days.
How about The Pikey? It is a kind of English pub with eclectic, un-pub like food, but a little pricey. It's right next to the Samuel French Bookstore and I was afraid that I would spend more money than I should in there BEFORE going to The Pikey.
Onward. Cheebo? Hate the name. And then I noticed Elderberries Café. I see it as I drive up and down Sunset. It has the look of a well used neighborhood eatery, and I have always had a hankering to stop in. And so I did. A mish mash of counter, mismatched tables, an old style piano, and a little stage in the window where a scruffy bearded man strummed "Blowin' in the Wind". I had stepped back into the 1960s amid a crowd that hadn't been born until at least 30 years after the decade ended.
I squeezed into a table with my back at the unused piano. I saw a Whole Earth magazine and realized that this was likely a health food place. All right, that's fine, I can go healthy!
Then a slim slightly balding young man with a mustache and a sloganed T-shirt handed me a menu. And I realized. We are not talking just healthy, or even vegetarian. We are talking vegan. I have never eaten anything vegan. And I am not sure I want to.
But there is a man singing on the window stage and several customers right near me, and I just never have gotten this about myself, but I feel like I would be doing something vaguely disreputable if after sitting down I suddenly jump up and leave with an implicit "I don't like vegan" that was akin to an explicit shout.
What sounded vaguely like something I could tolerate? A Mediterranean Panini. Olives. Tomato. Some green leafy thing and cheese. Ok. That's the order. Except the cheese I would realize when the otherwise attractive sandwich appeared was not in anyway related to cows. What it is made of I didn't ask, but it tasted nothing like any kind of cheese I have ever experienced.
I perused the Whole Life Magazine, Reiki, Mindfulness, Tantric sex. And I didn't hate the sandwich. I didn't like it a lot. But I didn't hate it. There was this strawberry lemonade thing that was pretty good, except for some odd pulp.
And I admitted to myself as I never have before. At least when it comes to food I am entirely mainstream. And when it comes to anything New Age, I just don't get it. But when in Rome, do as the Romans do, and I bade farewell to the man in the window, took a picture of Elderberries Café and chalked it up to an experience I won't repeat, but don't regret.
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