Brunch at Hard Knox Cafe this morning transported about 15 west coast snobs to the Deep South, complete with aluminum walls, Telemundo and our server, E.T. ("Extra Tooth").
We didn't quite know what to make of the menu at first; spare ribs, ox tail and grits were among our many options ("Where are the mimosas?? And the blueberry pancakes?"). We considered ordering the intriguing-sounding ox tail, then with further discussion of it likely being delivered to the restaurant in a cooler of ice, freshly chopped off the ass of a poor southern ox, it lost any semblance of appeal to us, so we opted instead for the spare ribs as a starter. Our young mustached waitress with the protruding extra tooth (aka E.T.) grew weary of our snooty inquisitiveness about the source of their meat, and proceeded to all but entirely ignore us from that point forward. We begged for water, then dared to request straws as well, and eventually they spared us some cornbread muffins to chew on, but only because Bryan had begun to lick the walls.
While the patrons at every table around us were being served their meals - including other members of our party who were sitting at separate tables - we were being restricted to meager rations of cornbread and water (Bryan had started sucking on the butter tablets at this point). We'd begun fighting over the last crumbs of cornbread, snarling and gnashing our teeth like wild animals. We gazed longingly at the plates of food on nearby tables and begged shamelessly for french fry donations just to keep ourselves from wasting away.
Needless to say, half an hour later, we still had no mimosas - the key ingredient to any Sunday brunch. If only we'd been drunk off mimosas, we might have forgotten food altogether. However, our stomachs were grumbling and our collective blood alcohol content was entirely too low for our liking. Our busboy had a fascination with delivering things to us in phases (more specifically in threes, even the straws), almost as a sort of cruel tease. First came the empty wine glasses, which sat in front of us, empty, for a good five minutes before our personal mini champagne bottles with their plastic caps arrived. We got to stare at those wistfully while the staff stood back and contemplated the orange juice that would complete our mimosas. Eventually we said fuck it and declared "Cheers!" before tearing off the plastic caps and drinking straight from the bottles. The orange juice arrived at long last in three mugs (for five people), each mug with its own straw, which meant siphoning the oj from the mugs and splashing it into our wine glasses for build-your-own mimosas, one teaspoon at a time. My mimosa ended up being approximately one part orange juice, nine parts champagne.
The spare ribs finally came, and we started eating them with forks and knives like true queens, then succumbed to the impatience that generally comes with starvation and resorted to ripping them apart with our teeth like savages. Our breakfast plates arrived to a round of applause and sheer jubilation; we proceeded to all but lick them clean. Bryan was even chewing the cheese off the ting of his fork.
After having eaten everything but the table itself, we sank back against our seats, feeling fat, happy and satisfactorily tipsy off our build-your-own mimosas, and declared to the world our undying love for the Hard Knox Cafe. Maybe that's all a part of their ploy - take the wise-cracking cynics and starve them to the point where you could serve them a plate of cardboard and they will tell you it's the best thing they've ever tasted. Well, it worked; we love that place.
No comments:
Post a Comment