Soul Food.

So, on Friday night I went to another soul food restaurant with my one friend from my program who's originally from the south, often goes with me to karaoke, and likes soul food. The place we went to has been around for like 60 years or so and is decently famous, and is located like 15 streets south of us and a bit inland, and when we entered the restaurant, there was this black family in the side room for some kind of banquet function (a lady had digital video recorder out) and a pair of blues musicians playing for tips at the front of the restaurant. The waitress was an incredibly dark, shorter, late 40s black woman with her hair pulled back from her face and an infectious laugh, and was like, "Here!", when we had sat down at our table, and she gave us a breadbasket full of mostly saltines, and a few packages of those really dry and small pre-baked breadsticks that you have to eat with a lot of water.

When she came up to take our order, me and my friend were deferring to each other to order first, and she was like, "I don't care who goes first, but somebody's gonna!", and she said that very nicely, and laughed.

When my friend did go first, then, he wanted the fried chicken, but he wasn't sure if he should order a 1/4 or a 1/2 chicken, so he told the waitress that, and asked if it was too much, and she was like, "It's only two-dollars more," and then he said it wasn't about too much money, but rather too much food, and then he asked her again what she thought, and she was like, "It depends. You a chicken eater?"

"Like how much is it?", he was like, again, "Is it too much?"

"I said, it depends," she said, laughing, and then repeated herself - "You a chicken eater?"

As it turns out, he did get the 1/2 chicken, with sides of "sweets" (=sweet potatos) and spinach, and I got smothered porkchops with a side of spaghetti and a side of mac and cheese.

"You're a pasta guy!", the waitress was like. "I can tell!"