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No one must know my terrible secret...

House of Noh!

Monday, March 28, 2005

The tiny, elderly woman who seems to be the owner and sole employee of the Noon Hour Grill under the Brown Line tracks at Irving runs the whole show, so just four or five customers at her little breakfast / lunch counter gets her bustling. While she’s bustling she says things like “oh my!” and “goodness gracious!” very quietly under her breath with her high-pitched gentle old lady voice in a manner that is endlessly endearing.

But don’t feel sorry for her when she gets lots of customers all at once demanding (courteously, everybody there is always very courteous to her) her attention. She likes to keep busy. “I don’t want to be old!” she’ll explain if anybody expresses their regret for her bustle. However, this not wanting to be old thing may just be what she says to be polite. I don’t know. If you sit at the counter and listen long enough you’ll eventually hear her express some bitter regret to her most familiar regulars over not taking the opportunity to sell her lunch counter at a totally sweet buy-out price a few years ago.

But if she feels like she’s frittering away her golden years cooking for a bunch of assholes, you wouldn’t know it. Here’s the best part about the Noon Hour Grill – which, standard rice cooker on top of an old television, spider plant baby growing roots in fresh water in a coffee cup on the formica counter, free issues of Chicago Shimpo magazine aside; the best part of the Noon Hour is really the old lady who runs it. If you eat everything you ordered she’ll reward you when she comes to take your empty plate away. “Oh! You finish! That SO NICE!” Where else will merely finishing what you ordered at a restaurant earn you such praise?

Oh, and the door to the Noon Hour Grill doesn’t shut all the way on its own, and the trains running over top of the little storefront are really noisy. So if you’re the one sitting closest to the door you’ve got to get up and push the door closed the last few inches after each new customer comes in. That’s your job.