No Stars

It looked like an inviting place for supper. And it was still open, despite the rather late hour. There were several of us and we were ravenous, ready to devour anything edible. I grasped what looked like the handle of the door, not thinking much about it, with my rumbling stomach. It was original, I thought: it went across the whole rectangular opening and was flat and thin, with some words on it that I didn’t stop to read, obviously. There was a group of hungry bodies behind me.

Once we were all inside, it started. Before it was over, I was determined to give the place zero stars, but I’ll let you decide if that was a good decision or not. It wasn’t the decor, which was mostly black and white with some trim in straight vertical and horizontal lines: dark red, green, blue. Here and there I could catch a bit of gold accents. However, then came the menu. That was the point where the stars began to disappear.

As I’ve already indicated, there were other people with me who also enjoyed a good meal. Some were even connoisseurs or critics. I knew some of them, but not all, and am not sure how many of us formed the group. All I recall is that we began to order and I want to tell you what happened. It’s not necessary to provide all the details; a summary will suffice. It’s quicker and easier if I just use the first person and describe the story as If I’m the main person. You should know, though, that my voice wasn’t the only one, so that the stars or lack of them for the place are not my opinion alone. If you think I’m making this up, that it’s pure fiction, I can assure you it isn’t.

Someone ordered mashed potatoes, and they were not white or creamy but some other color, not realistic for potatoes. Not an appetizing look. They weren’t touched. Someone ordered coffee. It was supposed to be black, but looked like ink. The server said:

“Wasn’t the order for black coffee? This is black.”

I don’t know if anybody drank the coffee.

Next was pasta with arrabiatta (that might be the spelling) tomato sauce. Nothing indicated the cherry tomatoes would be raw, sitting atop the whitish corkscrews. Not appetizing at all. The dish also went untouched, but the fuming could have cooked what were otherwise nice-looking little ovals.

Calamares en su tinta is a popular dish in Spain, although some find the liquid squid produce to be a bit strong. I’m one of those people. In this case the ink was not edible (we thought) because it was the kind used in fountain pens. That was sent back to the kitchen immediately.

Russian dressing was chosen for a mixed salad. It was very cold and froze that vegetables it covered. Odd, but inedible. The cheesecake that somebody ordered was a cake of cheese, literally. Maybe it was Gruyère or Swiss, but a hunk of cheese on a plate doesn’t usually constitute a dessert. It was pushed aside.

We tried to laugh, having realized we were not in a regular restaurant. We even dubbed it a lexical lounge and told ourselves:

“We’re learning English.”

Still, we were hungry.

It was not a good idea to order the next items. Spring rolls, spring salad - you might suspect we were naïve to do so. The first came as a metal coil wrapped around lettuce, shredded. Carrots and something else. The second was. A tossed affair of little metal bits in conical shapes amid hard-boiled eggs, olives, and other things. Tempers were flaring..

Fried clams seemed like a safe bet and in places like Maine are very popular. Nothing on the menu had indicated they would be served breaded and still in their shells. I don’t remember if any broken teeth came of that dish.

Coffee was ordered again, even though we should have been wiser after the first cup that had been as black as licorice. Two forms came to the table. It was coffee al right, with cream and sugar on the side. However, the choices were either beans or grounds. Clearly not drinkable. The stars were disappearing at the speed of light.

Calzone are everyone’s favorite, but if you don’t know what the Italian word means, never order it in this place…

Blueberries! Someone suggested them because they were just a fruit and there could hardly be a problem with them. That person didn’t know that, according to a comedian whose name I’ve forgotten, there is no blue food. The result? These blueberries were honestly blue, meaning some chef had painted them both the color of a summer sky as well as an aquamarine shade. Pretty, but not anything we dared eat. We also didn’t dare to ask what type of paint had been applied to the surface nor how it had been made to stick to it, because real blueberries, while not true blue, are smooth and slippery.

Vol-au-vent? You tell me what the name of that pastry means and you’ll know what was served. We decided not to look too closely. Devil’s food cake was the same way. None of us had the faintest idea what the Devil eats, but it wasn’t the traditional rich brown cake everyone knows. We worried about its effects on us and it went the way of other mistakes we’d already made in ordering.

I saw what I thought was lobster roll listed on page five (it was a long menu, suspiciously long). The server heard what I said and shook her head, saying:

“That’s a typo. It should be an M. We’re sold out anyway.”

I was happy and did not ask what it was. No need to know.

The burrito had no indication of ingredients, but it’s pretty commonly made with beans and/or ground meat. This time we were brought a fringed little animal that we recognized as a piñata, small enough to fit on the table, but not enticing enough to pick it up and eat it. As I recall, it was orange with green trim that was not cilantro.

Next, the dish described as served on a bed of lettuce was exactly that: some items that could have been miniature pillows and sheets on an actual mattress fashioned of shredded lettuce. Whimsical, maybe, creative, even comical. Not anything anybody in our group chose to eat. 

The final attempt to get something in our stomachs was seared scallops with a sauce whose name I’ve forgotten. It’s not a dish everyone can make, but I love scallops served any fashion - except for this fashion, which was something out of the fifties. I mean, really! These scallops were something out of a ladies’ dress shop from the fifties, all curved and with lace edging to boot. Not the most appetizing I’ve had, so I passed.

With the stars down to zero by now, I felt the responsibility of asking what sort of place we had wandered into. Our server looked surprised. She stared at me and said;

“Didn’t you notice when you came in?” I said no.

“Didn’t you notice the entryway?”

I had thought, logically, that the rectangle was a door, but she corrected my error, explaining that the handle was a band the put on some covers.

“On covers?”

She nodded. It was then that it all made sense. She confirmed that realization by asking if I’d noticed the name of the place.

“Litoral,” I replied, thinking it referred to a seafood restaurant because that refers to a shoreline (I think).

“You should read more carefully,” she sort of chastised me, saying, the name is Literal. You should pay more attention in the future.”

The last star finally lifted off skyward. Toward a place where people knew what they were reading.