I Eat at an Old-People Restaurant
I’m a mid-level food snob. When I cook I season with freshly ground pepper and pinches of kosher salt from my forty-dollar ceramic salt pig. I study restaurant reviews, overpay for allegedly farm-fresh produce, take risks at grungy food carts hoping to find a diamond in the rough and I write snarky comments online when a high-priced chef doesn’t live up to my expectations.
Lately, however, my wife and I have been going to a kind of place I swore I would never go.
The restaurant is called Heidi’s. Heidi’s presents itself to passing motorists as a kitschy tribute to Bavarian cuisine, but the locals know what it really serves. It serves the subgenre of American cuisine that is never spoken of.
Heidi’s makes food for old people.
I didn’t make plans for growing old, and if I had, those plans would not have included Heidi’s. Yet here I sit.
It started innocently enough. Several years ago my wife and I were in the car, bored and hungry, and there it was. We knew Heidi’s reputation. We told ourselves that we were going there ironically — to eat and gently mock the food and the clientele. We would be dismissive and condescending. We would only do it once.
Little did we know that Heidi’s was the culinary version of the Hotel California. “You can check-out any time you…
