Thanksgiving TODAI
Modern Thanksgiving began on the fourth Thursday in November, 1863. The tide had turned against the South that summer at Gettysburg and Vicksburg, so Lincoln decided "Hey, Confederacy, we're going to have a day of Thanksgiving in your FACE!" And as the Union soldiers dined on Boar's Head Turkey and stuffing(and in the days to follow, sandwiches) the rebels enjoyed a smorgasbord of disease, slavery, and losing. And so I decided(in hindsight) to honor this American buffet of death by spending Thanksgiving at a Japanese buffet of life; in fact, the greatest buffet known to me: TODAI.
TODAI, which is Japanese for 'Fat American Fuck', has an interior that runs from 32nd to 31st Street. The atmosphere is simultaneously vast and intimate. The trough itself is half the length of a city block, and laid out in three sections: hot foods, sushi/rolls, and salads. The salad section, which is the least frequented(SURPRISE!!!), lies between hot foods and sushi/rolls creating a "No Man's Land" into which only wander the lost and the damned. My waitress made no attempt to explain this to me as I led us to my table, nor did she have to; I had been there before. In one practiced motion I removed my jacket, gave her my drink order, and hissed her on her way. I looked around the crowded restaurant at the families swarming like ants on an inexhaustible corpse. Thanksgiving had begun.
On the way to wash my hands, I was greeted outside the men's room by a pile of fresh vomit.
"Ah, ha, HA! Someone's had all they can eat! So hungry you couldn't be bothered with chewing your crab rings I see! Soon may I join you, my pelican friend!"
Stepping over a pile of vomit to wash your hands at a buffet is, more or less, a useless gesture unless every other person touching your serving tongs has stepped over a pile of vomit to wash their hands as well. On other occasions, at other buffets, I have placed a napkin between my hand and the food grabbers, but on this day of sharing turkey and germs, I thought that would be an insult to the many people with whom I was dining alone. So by the power of Lincoln, everyone at TODAI received a napkin pardon.
Buffets are like a dairy animal with a hundred different flavored breasts to be sampled and dismissed until we find the teat or two that's going to most inform our adolescent development. After a couple of passes and two 'sampler' plates, my Thanksgiving had more or less become a bottomless plate of white fish with Ungai sauce. Boneless, light, and delicious, I could have eaten it until I had to vomit outside the men's room, you know what I mean? Then in the sushi/roll section, things got sentimental. Thinking of my relatives in Miami who would soon be gathering at my cousins to eat, I took a 'Miami Roll' even though it's not my favorite thing. But sometimes Thanksgiving isn't so much about filling your gut with what you want, as it is taking one in the gut... for your heart. Later when I returned to the sushi/roll section, I walked by the Miami Rolls again only to realize that I'd misread the labels earlier and eaten some other kind of roll by mistake.
"Jesus Christ," I thought, but I put another "Miami Roll" on my plate. I'm pretty sure my waitress took it away with the rest of my plate out of revenge while I went to find my own diet-Pepsi refill, but the point is that I took it, and how much fish, rice, and mayonnaise do I need to eat before my relatives don't even know I'm thinking about them anyway? Just like those young southern boys took a "Mineball Roll" in the tummy for their cousins in Mineball-town on that Thanksgiving so many years ago; a Thanksgiving they weren't even celebrating because they had seceded, and Jeff Davis couldn't declare a Thanksgiving day on the same day as Abe Lincoln because how would that look?
This meal was merely a nicer version of the first Thanksgiving I'd spent in New York: hungover at the worst Chinese buffet in Astoria. Thanksgiving 2006 could be exchanged with almost any other meal I'd had alone at TODAI except for the part about the vomit. It was as if the retch were saying no amount of food can replace family which I already knew, thanks.
I left stuffed, but not in pain. That came later when I had to sit in a crowded 'Casino Royale' next to a guy who liked to play thoughtfully(that's what it looked like he thought it looked like he was doing) with his face throughout the movie. Since I'm human and orient to movement in my peripheral vision in case it's a bear, this was extremely annoying. Despite my many attempts to mock him, he continued until I finally cupped the right side of my eyes with my hand before settling on a two finger blinder. Were it not Thanksgiving, maybe it would have made sense to say, "Could you PLEASE not molest your face during the movie, Professor Asshole?" but in the spirit of the day, I demured.
Turns out during the movie I'd received a voicemail from my friend Yang inviting me along with our friend Shawn over for vegetable lasagna and apple bake that Yang's girlfriend Sarah had made and left for us before heading to a wedding in Mexico. I was still full of course but I found the train and headed on over. Now Thanksgiving had begun.
TODAI, which is Japanese for 'Fat American Fuck', has an interior that runs from 32nd to 31st Street. The atmosphere is simultaneously vast and intimate. The trough itself is half the length of a city block, and laid out in three sections: hot foods, sushi/rolls, and salads. The salad section, which is the least frequented(SURPRISE!!!), lies between hot foods and sushi/rolls creating a "No Man's Land" into which only wander the lost and the damned. My waitress made no attempt to explain this to me as I led us to my table, nor did she have to; I had been there before. In one practiced motion I removed my jacket, gave her my drink order, and hissed her on her way. I looked around the crowded restaurant at the families swarming like ants on an inexhaustible corpse. Thanksgiving had begun.
On the way to wash my hands, I was greeted outside the men's room by a pile of fresh vomit.
"Ah, ha, HA! Someone's had all they can eat! So hungry you couldn't be bothered with chewing your crab rings I see! Soon may I join you, my pelican friend!"
Stepping over a pile of vomit to wash your hands at a buffet is, more or less, a useless gesture unless every other person touching your serving tongs has stepped over a pile of vomit to wash their hands as well. On other occasions, at other buffets, I have placed a napkin between my hand and the food grabbers, but on this day of sharing turkey and germs, I thought that would be an insult to the many people with whom I was dining alone. So by the power of Lincoln, everyone at TODAI received a napkin pardon.
Buffets are like a dairy animal with a hundred different flavored breasts to be sampled and dismissed until we find the teat or two that's going to most inform our adolescent development. After a couple of passes and two 'sampler' plates, my Thanksgiving had more or less become a bottomless plate of white fish with Ungai sauce. Boneless, light, and delicious, I could have eaten it until I had to vomit outside the men's room, you know what I mean? Then in the sushi/roll section, things got sentimental. Thinking of my relatives in Miami who would soon be gathering at my cousins to eat, I took a 'Miami Roll' even though it's not my favorite thing. But sometimes Thanksgiving isn't so much about filling your gut with what you want, as it is taking one in the gut... for your heart. Later when I returned to the sushi/roll section, I walked by the Miami Rolls again only to realize that I'd misread the labels earlier and eaten some other kind of roll by mistake.
"Jesus Christ," I thought, but I put another "Miami Roll" on my plate. I'm pretty sure my waitress took it away with the rest of my plate out of revenge while I went to find my own diet-Pepsi refill, but the point is that I took it, and how much fish, rice, and mayonnaise do I need to eat before my relatives don't even know I'm thinking about them anyway? Just like those young southern boys took a "Mineball Roll" in the tummy for their cousins in Mineball-town on that Thanksgiving so many years ago; a Thanksgiving they weren't even celebrating because they had seceded, and Jeff Davis couldn't declare a Thanksgiving day on the same day as Abe Lincoln because how would that look?
This meal was merely a nicer version of the first Thanksgiving I'd spent in New York: hungover at the worst Chinese buffet in Astoria. Thanksgiving 2006 could be exchanged with almost any other meal I'd had alone at TODAI except for the part about the vomit. It was as if the retch were saying no amount of food can replace family which I already knew, thanks.
I left stuffed, but not in pain. That came later when I had to sit in a crowded 'Casino Royale' next to a guy who liked to play thoughtfully(that's what it looked like he thought it looked like he was doing) with his face throughout the movie. Since I'm human and orient to movement in my peripheral vision in case it's a bear, this was extremely annoying. Despite my many attempts to mock him, he continued until I finally cupped the right side of my eyes with my hand before settling on a two finger blinder. Were it not Thanksgiving, maybe it would have made sense to say, "Could you PLEASE not molest your face during the movie, Professor Asshole?" but in the spirit of the day, I demured.
Turns out during the movie I'd received a voicemail from my friend Yang inviting me along with our friend Shawn over for vegetable lasagna and apple bake that Yang's girlfriend Sarah had made and left for us before heading to a wedding in Mexico. I was still full of course but I found the train and headed on over. Now Thanksgiving had begun.
posted by DvDLvN | 1:29 PM
|
1 comments
