Food to Go During a Global Pandemic

We'd accepted that some things were going to have to be done differently - no more French kissing complete strangers in the local park for example. My wife and I are creatures of habit and tend to dine out twice a week, Thursday and Saturday because it gives me a break from cooking and it's easy to do in America, or at least in Texas where it's not hard to find a decent place to eat and usually pretty cheap; but we accepted that if we were going to continue with date night, it was going to have to be takeaways for the foreseeable future, at least until the end of either the coronavirus or civilisation, whichever came first. So here's what we ate, or at least what I ate.

Jim's Diner: burger, fries, onion rings, apple pie. We reasoned that it's hard to go wrong with Jim's, conveniently forgetting a recent unfortunate trend towards a slightly chewier chicken fried steak brought to your table by someone with distracting personality flaws - such as that weird little guy who kept trying to engage us in conversation about how much he enjoyed watching vehicular collisions occurring opposite the diner along Broadway. Anyway, my wife ordered a chicken salad which looked as though it had been thrown together first thing that morning, perhaps even the previous evening, and both my order of fries and apple pie were absent, which we didn't discover until we got home. The burger was kind of sad too. Jim's is a great place to eat, but I guess takeaway was never really their thing. The entire chain went into suspended animation about a week later - no take out or anything - so I guess at least someone realised Jim's wasn't playing to its strengths. There was a time when I came fairly close to having the Jim's logo tattooed upon my person, so it causes me great pain to admit that this may well have been the worst take out food I've ever begrudgingly stuffed into my face.

LA Crawfish: shrimp po boy, fries, chicken nuggets. The LA prefix refers to the state of Louisiana, and this is a chain which serves Louisiana style stuff, of which the po boy is one example. It's actually just a baguette filled with, in this case, shrimp, but somebody apparently decided to call it a po boy so as to reduce Louisiana's surfeit of things which sound a bit French. I don't really get it. I assume the rebranding refers to the sort of person who might eat a shrimp baguette, specifically a young economically impoverished gentleman. What annoys me about the name is that it obliges me to either assume the identity of a comedy English person by asking for a poor boy, or to impersonate a black man from New Orleans simply by pronouncing it correctly. Anyway, the last shrimp po boy I had from LA Crawfish was pretty good. This one was probably the same, but it turned out that I wasn't so hungry as I'd thought, and I struggled with what is essentially a loaf of bread cut in half length-ways and filled with shrimp, lettuce, mayonnaise, and peppers. It's the sort of thing you would more logically eat with a knife and fork, but no-one does, so it feels weird even to attempt to do so. Also, being a fucking idiot, I forgot just how massive the LA Crawfish po boy tends to be and ordered chicken nuggets as well as fries; so there was way too much of it and it was all too dry.

Hung Fong: sweet and sour chicken, spring roll. The problem with committing oneself to a course of takeaway food is that something which might be enjoyed in a diner or eating place doesn't always work as takeaway - as I learned the hard way with Jim's, or, I suppose, the slightly soggy way. That said, I've regarded Chinese food as primarily takeaway for a long time, at least since I was a teenager, even if I'm sat eating it at a table inside a restaurant. Happily this means that Hung Fong's fare translates to styrofoam conveyance without so much as a hiccup, and makes just as much sense consumed at home while watching Wheel of Fortune. This is nice because, perhaps ironically, Hung Fong's fare tastes like proper food more than it tastes like what I've traditionally come to think of as Chinese takeaway, which is probably the difference between English and American variations upon what Chinese people actually eat. Hung Fong is the oldest Chinese restaurant in San Antonio, having been established back in 1939, and they're friends of the family - or at least Jeff is - so we feel it's sort of our duty to keep the place going until normal service is resumed.

Los Dos Laredos: migas plate, coffee. My wife and myself have regarded Los Dos Laredos as more or less the greatest Mexican diner in the universe for at least the last couple of years. It's one of those little orange buildings you might not immediately notice on the Austin Highway, one of many, a happy cartoon chili pepper wearing a sombrero enthusiastically hand-painted on the window and at least one waitresses with a reassuringly slender grasp of English, and the food is wonderful. Amazingly, it works just as well in takeaway form - which has come as a massive relief - and such is the culinary excellence of the establishment that I even ordered a takeaway coffee where I wouldn't ordinarily bother, because even their coffee is amazing and somehow unlike that served by anyone else. The migas plate, for those unfamiliar with the term, is essentially an omelet made with crushed up corn chips, salsa, and a ton of cheese, so it's basically a crunchy omelet and is absurdly fortifying; and happily it works just as well at home following conveyance by means of styrofoam container.

Shake Shack: chicken burger, fries, salted caramel shake. We were heading for Good Time Charlie's but became fearful that their ordinary fare was of such excellence that the mobile version could only come as a disappointment, so instead we went across the road to Shake Shack, which is part of a chain, and about which we'd been wondering ever since they set up shop on that corner where the Kiddie Park used to be. The chicken was crispy and delicious, and the shake may actually have been the greatest thing I've ever sucked through a straw, not least because I actually could suck it through a straw unlike the usual multicoloured nightmares in flavoured sugar with the consistency of peanut butter. We ate in the car, in the parking lot of Half Price Books so as to watch all the pussy cats which congregate in the area, so it felt like a bit of an occasion.

Popeye's: chicken burger. Having once ordered a Popeye's poor boy, or rather a po boy, at least as cumbersome as the thing I had from LA Crawfish, I wisely limited myself to just the chicken burger, which was actually decent. As the restaurant - if we're now going to call fast food joints restaurants - was fully closed (rather than open but with the seating area cordoned off), I was obliged to sit in the drive-through lane on my bike behind a massive truck like some kind of lunatic. Thankfully my order came through pretty quickly. I think the last time I went inside a branch of Popeye's it took about twenty minutes, which I assumed to be a deliberate delay intended to reinforce the illusion of our being in Louisiana where sitting around on your arse and not giving a fuck actively counts as an undertaking.

Shake Shack: chicken burger, cheese burger, fries, salted caramel shake. We went back but somehow it wasn't as good. I had an extra burger in the belief that just one wouldn't be enough, but it was too much and the chicken wasn't as crispy, plus it was pissing down with rain and I realised I needed new shoes as I crossed the forecourt to place the order. I realised this because my feet were damp.

Shake Shack: chicken burger, fries, salted caramel shake. Yet the third time was just as good as the first, so I have no idea what happened there given that it was still pissing with rain. Perhaps a pall was cast across the previous occasion by the passing of Eddie from Little & Large.

El Jibarazo: carne asada tacos. El Jibarazo is a semi-stationary taco truck parked next to a raised porch built on the side an automotive place owned by the same people. I seem to recall Trump warning us about taco trucks, which really says more about him than anything else. El Jibarazo's food is kind of basic, I suppose, but pisses over pretty much everything else in San Antonio. Their carne asada tacos - or Mexican street tacos if you live in Portland, tend to screech a lot and your fave band is Ha Ha Tonka - may conceivably be the greatest tacos on the planet and are no less amazing eaten at home given that they're already takeaway.

Los Dos Laredos: migas plate, coffee. Still good during the second weekend of the lockdown and made us both feel better after another encounter with a certain passive-aggressive relative who should really have been staying the fuck home rather than worrying about hire cars given that she doesn't actually have any friends to visit.

Guajillo's: mole poblano. Guajillo's was the last place we ate before everything shut down, and their mole poblano is amazing and the best version of this dish I've eaten outside Mexico. It's that chocolate and chilli thing everyone's heard about, and I've tried to cook it myself but have never got the balance right. The key seems to be that it should be just a little more spicy than you like, which is something I find difficult to judge, but whoever rules the frying pan at Guajillo's is clearly a master of the art. Anyway, we didn't even realise Guajillo's was doing take out during the shut down, and hadn't even wondered, assuming their food to be one of those things which wouldn't really work in mobile form. Happily we were wrong and being able to eat Guajillo's mole poblano at home came fairly close to a religious experience.

McDonalds: cheeseburgers, fries, soda. I was ill, but thankfully with diverticulitis rather than coronavirus. This is an occasionally recurring condition which manifests as stomach cramps and an inability to poo, which I usually get around with Milk of Magnesia and a liquid only diet for as long as it takes - usually just a day; and at the end of this particular day I began to experience hunger and so opted for something fairly bland just to be on the safe side. I only seem to eat at McDonald's when I'm ill, and on this occasion it was nevertheless welcome

Sabor Cocinabar: enchiladas Aztecas. Along with Good Time Charlie's, Guajillo's, Los Dos Laredos, and El Jibarazo, Sabor Cocinabar is one of those places which I'd consider top shelf - Mexican food with an unusual gourmet angle, but gourmet Mexican rather than the usual Mexican food for people who don't actually like Mexican food thing which one encounters around this parish from time to time. I'm not even sure what the hell enchiladas Aztecas actually is, but it's gorgeous, seemingly a relative of mole poblano but as an enchilada and involving fried potatoes amongst other things, and with a bewildering suggestion of caramel, or something like caramel. I had doubts it would translate into a takeaway version, and regrettably it kind of didn't, although I couldn't really work out why. There was nothing obviously wrong or lacking except that somehow it lacked spirit, so maybe the ingredient I've yet to identify is witchcraft.

Good Time Charlie's: cilantro jack steak, fries, house salad. We put off the inevitable sampling of Charlie's takeaway service for fear of it failing to live up to the standard of their food as served in house. Charlie's probably qualifies as our all-time favourite diner. We chalked up thirty-one separate visits in 2019, beating Los Dos Laredos by two; of course we should have known better and trusted in Charlie's where even the fucking salad is amazing; and the aforementioned fucking salad was, against all reason, still amazing as takeaway in a styrofoam punnet, contrary to expectations lowered by that weird limp thing we brought home from Jim's the other week. Jim's, to briefly backtrack, is usually great but has been occasionally prone to lackluster intervals depending, I suppose, on who they have working for them at the time, and whilst an actual poor meal at Jim's is a truly rare thing, when they screw up, the food tends to remind you that you're eating at a chain restaurant. Charlie's by comparison is like the very best of Jim's done right to the point of tasting like home cooking, so it's probably significant that they're not a chain. Cilantro jack steak, in case you were wondering, is a hamburger steak grilled with fresh cilantro - or coriander if you prefer - inside, topped with cheese, and I could die happy eating it. It's the sort of food you anticipate eating at the end of a tough day. You can actually feel your soul healing as you dine. The cheese was a little dryer than usual as takeaway, but it was still lush.

Los Dos Laredos: migas plate, coffee. Third visit and still delivering the goods.

Shake Shack: chicken burger, fries, cookies and cream shake. I was going to cook that evening but a power outtage curtailed my plans, obliging us all - even the kid - to go out for a drive because the car has air conditioning, what with this being Texas and all. They were out of salted caramel shake, but the cookies and cream was good. Once again we ate in the car in the parking lot at Half Price, and this time we saw more of the local cats, including the black fluffy one, due to the weather being warm and sunny.

There followed further visits to Los Dos Laredos, Good Time Charlie's and El Jibarazo for the same orders as listed above for a further couple of weeks until the restaurants opened up again, albeit at 25% seating capacity; but writing about every last meal gets repetitive, and I'm sure you get the general idea.

One Episode Was Enough

The Alienist. Unfortunately nothing to do with the people upstairs, but rather the term refers to a Victorian era psychologist or something of the sort, based on the notion that mad people were alienated from their true selves. Being set in America - specifically New York - I still don't quite see how this sort of thing qualifies as Victorian, but never mind. I suppose it works better than Clevelandian, which would reference President Grover Cleveland, whom I've only actually heard of through having looked him up just now. Anyway, our Alienist seems to be an exception within the psychological practice of his day in so much as that he attempts analysis by trying to understand his patients rather than just flogging them or locking them up like everyone else. Personally I find this unconvincing, even if it allows for greater scope in terms of the story - not that they take advantage of the fact, and it might have been a little more entertaining had he just spent the full forty-three minutes trying to flog the truth out of the rest of the cast. The problem is that they seem to have spunked away all the money on making the whole thing look like some tedious steampunk console game, leaving just a few bucks in the kitty to pay for a script. You get what you pay for, is therefore the lesson we should take from this one.

Crazyhead. I'm not sure why it's called Crazyhead, so maybe that's explained in a later episode. Maybe the girls end up recruited to one of those secretive government organisations which squirrels away all the stuff that falls off flying saucers, and the organisation is named Crazyhead, for some reason. Anyway, this is about two twenty-something women who fight demons whilst cracking jokes, and was as such probably pitched as Buffy the Vampire Slayer meets Pramface. It's watchable because Susie Wokoma is in it, and she's always wonderful, but otherwise the general quality of the show divides the scenes into those featuring Susie Wokoma and those during which you're mostly just waiting for Susie Wokoma to reappear; beyond which it's all bargain bucket CGI, flaps gags, and young dubiously employed people who somehow live in those London Dockland apartments which not even your average brain surgeon can afford, or which are kept empty as an investment by unscrupulous foreign landlords.

Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency. I've never been entirely convinced by Douglas Adams, and his books tend to read like an endless series of snappy retorts with linking material, at least to me. I loved Hitchhiker's Guide when it was on the telly, and I enjoyed the novels when they first appeared, at least the first two. I tried reading Dirk Gently, and whilst I have fond memories of that first page about a truck driver who is actually a rain God, for some reason I never got any further with the book. Similarly I don't remember a lot about this first episode of the television adaptation, except that there was a Hobbit in it, and I found it irritating for all the reasons I expected to find it irritating.

11.22.63. This is an event series according to the promotional material. I appreciate that no television production company is ever going to attract viewers with here's this show we made, it's a bit shit to be honest but some of you might get a kick out of it, but describing 11.22.63 as an event series still seems a bit much, unless the implication is that it was produced through a series of events - Stephen King writing a book, the cameraman turning up for work as usual, some actor remembering his lines and so on. Otherwise, I'd say it's more of an occurrence series in so much as that it has occurred, because it's basically Quantum Leap with moderate sexual swearwords. The premise is that some guy discovers a magical land at the back of his closet, just like in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, but the magical land is the year 1960 rather than Narnia. Our man decides to change history by saving Kennedy from assassination in the hope of making the present day amazing, but snuffs it before he can finish the job, so he enlists a school teacher to finish it for him, specifically an English teacher. We know he's an English teacher because we first see him as he's teaching a class about writing. He stands in front of a blackboard upon which is named the next book to be read by his class - The Lurker at the Threshold by H.P. Lovecraft and August Derleth. This was the point at which I was unable to continue with the suspension of my disbelief because The Lurker at the Threshold is awful, a work which August Derleth expanded to novel length from a couple of pages scribbled by Herbert Philips before he shuffled off to that great gambrel roofed drawing room in the sky. Sir may as well have had his class reading Sven Hassel or Jeffrey Archer. The rest of 11.22.63 was pretty much as you'd expect, all pristine cars with ludicrous tail fins and not a single smudge of dirt on one of them, girls with pointy knockers, kids who say gee willickers, and waiters helpfully mentioning that it's still 1960. I expect Dean Stockwell turns up in part two.

Inhumans. I read some of the comic when I was a kid, and it impressed me enough to have left a lingering sense of nostalgia; and re-reading it as an adult sort of works because the whole premise of the Inhumans is just weird enough to be interesting; so of course they had to make a TV show, because when will we see an end to this terrible shortage of caped telly?

The effects are wonderful, as you would expect of something which apparently used up such a proportion of the budget as to leave about five cents with which to pay whoever wrote the script, most of which was the sort of portentous horseshit that worked in a comic because if you were reading the comic then you were probably about eight-years old.

Unlike the comic book, Black Bolt wears no mask with a piano tuner stuck on the top because I expect some genius decreed that it would look ridiculous, and yet we nevertheless have ridiculous elements which weren't even in the comic book, but which have been added because that's how we make television these days, and oh look - another fucking fight scene which needlessly slips into slow motion every couple of seconds, because I haven't seen that one since at least Tuesday. More off-putting still is that the bloke who plays Black Bolt seems to be the singer from Death in June.

I don't know why they made this.

iZombie. It's hilarious, I was told by a man who patently found it so hilarious that he could barely speak, because just talking about it brought back memories of its hilarity. The premise is that some blandly good-looking young woman is bitten by a zombie and so becomes a zombie, or a sort of zombie in so much as that she gets to keep her personality - which is used mainly in the dispensation of wry observations and knowing asides - and resembles a photogenic goth rather than an actual living corpse, conditional to a steady supply of human brains upon which she can feed. By happy coincidence she seems to work in the pathology lab of a cop show and therefore has regular access to stiffs. Also, it transpires that when she eats a brain, she is able to relive some of the memories of the deceased and thusly is she also able to solve crimes, like who murdered them, for one obvious example; so it's basically Angel with a hot zombie chick. That is the thing that it was. The thing that it wasn't is hilarious.

Once Upon a Time. Just imagine if all of our most beloved fairy tales were real, and they all happened within the same continuity, and if that wondrous realm were somehow connected to our world; and if anyone is still awake after reading that sentence, then Once Upon a Time is probably the show for you. My guess would be that it came about upon one enchanted eve of the magical chance encounter of a marketing executive who just happened to notice that Game of Thrones was big bucks, with another marketing executive who had a vision, specifically a vision about it still being worth giving the Harry Potter cow another squeeze. Thus didst they weaveth a tale about the magic of stories with CGI effects rendering everything like unto an animate Thomas Kinkade painting and a script of such weft that even a line so crappy as you don't have to do this seemed not so unusually far from home. Plinky-plonky piano starts up whenever anyone feels a bit sad, everyone is kind of good looking, Robert Carlyle's career slips a little further down the pole than where it came to rest during his stint on Stargate, and I also noticed some use of that accent which Americans do when they're pretending to be Oirish, so I did to be sure. Once Upon a Time is so good it could almost have been written by Warren Ellis.

Santa Clarita Diet. Bland suburban whiteys who happen to be estate agents find their world turned upside down when mom turns out to be a zombie, and as such demands a constant supply of fresh human meat - with hilarious consequences. It's probably just me who doesn't consider the very concept of Santa Clarita Diet - if we're going to even call it a concept - inherently hilarious, but even so, they almost did a pretty good job with this one. The script is sort of witty and the cast are mostly great and with a decent sense of comic timing, and it could have been a total pile of shite, yet somehow isn't; but there's no getting around Drew Barrymore. I don't know what it is about the woman, but I just can't watch her. I can't tell if she's overacting, or if she's a great actor simply playing an excruciatingly annoying character to perfection, but whichever it is, the results amount to the same thing. She seems incapable of delivering a single line without boggling her eyes, pouting in needlessly exaggerated fashion, or else pulling some variation on the face which says, you don't have to be crazy to work here, but it helps! It's as though she's on stage trying to convey every last nuance of her lines to those in the cheap seats, a mile and a half up in the sky, or she's playing the villain in a silent film of the twenties. Maybe she tones it down in later episodes, and we get to enjoy the show on its own merits, but unfortunately there's just no way of knowing.

Skins. I'm probably a bit behind the curve with this one, but at least now I understand why this should be the first time I've seen it, given that I can't imagine the trailers would have piqued my interest had one caught my attention. The strangest realisation, at least for me, is that this is what most English television now looks like from where I'm sat, and have been sat since 2011. I realise most American sitcoms are three people on a sofa, with a fourth walking in the door and asking how's it hanging? as the laugh track goes ballistic; but I think I'd rather have even that than yet more teenagers cracking rape jokes in front of a shaky camera with Arctic fucking Monkeys on the soundtrack. At least American sofa comedy is honest about being a corporate entertainment product and doesn't try to pass itself off as the Sex Pistols. The entire internet seems to have thought Skins was great, with some even claiming it provides an uncannily accurate mirror to their own lives. Maybe teenagers have changed, because in my day they were mostly socially inept spotty twats bearing no resemblance to these wisecracking post-ironic sophisticates busily arranging to have each other's cherries casually popped in between viola lessons and twocking cars. Of course, we was yer actual working class, give or take some small change, although apparently so are this lot. You can tell the kids from Skins are working class because they go to what is amusingly identified as a posh party in the first episode, meaning that they themselves ain't posh - I guess - and admittedly most kids of my generation and milieu generally started our day auditioning for the city chamber choir at a private girls' school. You can also tell that the kids from Skins are working class because they use street credibility words and commonly greet each other with a chirpy call of shit your bollocks out of my titting cock you wanking fucking cunty knob, which as you know is how working class kids on the street tend to speak. Skins falls somewhere between being J.K. Rowling's Trainspotting and the Inbetweeners taken seriously, and is as such unwatchable. At the risk of appearing judgemental, if you enjoy Skins then you're a fucking idiot. Sorry.

Vikings. It's like The Sopranos with longships, they said. The first episode looked more like CSI: Götaland due to an excessively digitised image speeding up, slowing down and pulling all those jerky little moves which make everything look like a Nine Inch Nails video - the stuff which suggests a game presumably in the hope of conning a few teenagers into watching. Maybe it comes to resemble The Sopranos as the series goes on, or maybe whoever said that was simply watching The Sopranos in the mistaken belief of it being a later instalment of the same story set in modern New Jersey. My knowledge of Viking culture is only marginally smaller than my enthusiasm for the same, so I don't know how authentic this was - apparently the story of a Viking who discovers America, or who discovers something across the sea which his Viking CEO has forbidden him to discover. The fact of it being produced by the History Channel doesn't bode any better than the fact of the first episode comprising a sequence of scenes I've seen a million times before.

Oh look, our hero is off on business, and here's a couple of ruffians calling on his feisty Viking wife intent on having their wicked way, and bugger me - she's just beaten both of them up and sent them packing due to her characteristic feistiness. Who could possibly have seen that coming?

The dialogue was about what you'd expect. No-one actually said talk to the hand or ain't nobody got time for that in this episode, but it wouldn't have made much difference. Most of the script has been written in the Marvel comics version of Shakespeare with a vaguely Scandinavian accent, and the bloke who built the boat was Keith Flint whom older boys and girls will remember from the Prodigy.