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No one must know my terrible secret...

House of Noh!

Wednesday, May 24, 2006

The best part about the Mr. Sub location which I think is at Washington and Wells, or Madison and Wells, just to the East of the West side of the Loop tracks, is the mirror on the far side wall of the restaurant and the narrow little counter against that wall you can eat at on stools. I think that normally sitting at a tiny little counter pressed up against a wall like that would feel stifling and like a punishment, but the mirror gives a covert vantage of the busy restaurant and Chicago as well outside the plate windows of the store. So it doesn’t help my creep factor at all but when I eat at that mirror counter I never even open the book I always have with me because I never have anybody to talk to when I eat a workday lunch at a place like that. Also the subs are good and the cold can of Orange Crush they give you with your order while they are shouting at you to move out of the way (but nicely, they are really very friendly behind the counter) is the perfect compliment to their corned beef.

Well, sorry Mr. Sub but you’re no longer my favorite crummy downtown restaurant. Mr. Sub, I’ve grown, and you’re just not crummy enough for me anymore. I’m with Mr G’s Dawg and Burger now in River North. There’s a cook that whistles (which I don’t like) but there’s also a drunk that sits in a booth with his many bottles of half filled hand lotion spread out on the table like he’s got nothing and will pick up anything out of the garbage just to count it all and say it’s his who sings under his breath with the R&B played as Muzak and who knows every single word of every song and can sing it all in perfect pitch (which I do like). I saw the other cook, the one who doesn’t whistle, wipe his mouth on his apron the other day. Then I saw him pick his nose and wipe it on his apron, which is a better place to wipe a booger than on a girlfriend. It’s not funny. Or endearing. I realize that…now.

The other day I ordered a cheeseburger at the counter and the woman customer who was there at the counter in front of me and had just relayed an elaborate order to the cooks hung her head and was like, “of course! A cheeseburger! I should have gotten a cheeseburger!!” Her angst doesn’t make sense out of the context of the Mr. G’s but I totally understood the way she felt: the menu seems small but if you keep looking at it after you order you’ll always be sorry you didn’t get something else. The other day I hung around the counter after I placed my order, listening to the cooks call me a pussy in espanol in a sidelong way confident that I didn’t know the language - this is what happens when you order Diet Pepsi at these places (an attitude which I find unenlightened both in terms of gender empowerment and carb consciousness, but this is my only complaint of the Mr. G’s). Standing at the counter I watched the cook who doesn’t whistle assemble a sandwich on a big bun that had a huge piece of batter-fried cod on top of a large grilled steak. Somewhere there must be a cultural prohibition against making and/or consuming such a sandwich. Of this I am sure.