white lotus, le voltiguer, and the best chicken in tokyo

Every Wednesday after school, my best friend Emma and I would drive downtown to the best Thai restaurant in Dayton, Ohio. My father preferred Thai9, watered down and adjusted fittingly for middle class white business men. Emma and I were White Lotus girls. White Lotus is a small, white tiled, bar seats-only little box. The owner is also the chef and she is her only employee. Emma and I were in love with her. She was in her 60's at the time and her eyes were just a few inches over the counter. She was incredibly mean and would kick people out if they didn't order quick enough. Emma  and I would always get a burger and pad thai and she would scold us for never being able to finish it all. One time we walked in and she sat at the bar, watching a soap opera, clipping her toe nails on the bar, and told us we had to wait till the episode was over before she would start cooking our food. One time, just as she had started cooking, a cop car went by and stopped just a block down with its sirens on. She turned the burners off and left the diner, locking the door as she left. She was gone for maybe 15 minutes and upon returning said, "Those stupid cops always pulling people over outside of my shop its annoying so I go tell them to stop doing it."

Emma and I found a dead rat in one of the potted plants at the bar. 

A lot of other customers complained about her funny yet usually time consuming antics. Emma and I didn't mind all the things she did because the food was always delicious, we found her genuinely entertaining, and once you started eating and she had no meals to cook, talking to her was always very pleasant. She grew to like us over time and would often times make us drinks on the house and would tell us stories about her friends in Thailand. The pad thai was good among many other dishes, but her cheeseburger was so simple and delicious. I miss her and her restaurant where I spent so many afternoons at. Beyond the food being good, I associate White Lotus with lots of laughter and joy. 

                                     

I've never been an adventurous eater on my own accord. If I'm presented with any food, I will likely eat it but I won't go hunting for it on my own. When traveling, choosing a place to eat for me is an incredible debate with myself. "Too expensive." "No one is in there." "Too crowded." "Too far." "What if there is a better place a block away." "I already ate there and shouldn't eat there again because I'm only here for so long but what if the place I go instead is really bad and I regret it." These are all thoughts I have while deciding on a restaurant in unfamiliar places. Paris was a personal hell because every brasserie is the same aside from the color of the chairs outside and the price of wine. I couldn't for the life of me choose between places to dine in Paris so I just stuck to one that I liked and stopped kicking myself for not trying other places. It was an hour away from the apartment I was staying at but I still went every morning and afternoon. I developed a relationship with a table outside that I felt attached to and was magically available even at the busiest hours. The waiters there grew to be more fond of me as my French improved. Upon returning from a two week excursion in Berlin, the sexy waiters gave me a croque-madame on the house which felt very triumphant compared to my other interactions with Parisians. The food there was okay, very mediocre and stereotypically French but there was just something about the place that resonated with me. In the many afternoons I had spent there, I sat next to Frances McDormand and watched her chain smoke and talk politely to excited pedestrians. I stopped by the cafe after an afternoon trip to Versailles and found myself sitting next to an old lover who I had met on the train in New York some 3 years prior. I ran into my friend Violet at that cafe and we spent 5 hours talking. There was a men's clothing store across the small street and one of the employees there would come outside from time-to-time and ask to borrow my lighter. He was handsome and cute but I only thought so because I was in Paris. This man otherwise would've gone unnoticed in other places. We developed a nice repertoire of borrowing cigarettes and lighters from each other and we seldom spoke to each other about anything other than, bonjour ca va? One morning I was walking in Montmartre and the man I barter with came running from behind me and playfully hit the back of my head. He got on the same train as me but in a different car and we sort of tango'd through multiple neighborhoods until we reached our obvious destinations; the cafe and clothing store. There was definitely something romantic between us but also something incestuous. My last day in Paris, I bid adieu to the cafe and ate escargot and had a glass of wine around noon. It was a beautiful morning and I remember feeling melancholy about something specific, but I am having a hard time remembering. 

Outside of Tokyo you can find the Miyazaki museum. It skirts a small forest with little shrines and paths all over. I stumbled blindly through the forest in the rain and reveled at how Miyazaki-esque the forest happened to look that day. When I finally came to a road, I went into a small tea shop with only two petite tables. I asked the woman working if she could point me in the direction of the popular museum. When I arrived at the museum, I waited in line for maybe an hour at most and when finally getting to the front, I was informed that since I am a tourist from out of the country, I had to make a reservation at least 90 days in advance online. They luckily have a Totoro statue outside for rejected guests like me to depressingly take photos with. The rain came down harder and I ran back into the tea shop that I had stopped in an hour before. The lady working sat me down and told me she was sorry for not warning me about the ticketing process for tourists. 

That evening, I went back to the apartment I was staying in which happened to be in a more residential area near Shibuya on the other side of the highway. There were hardly any places to eat near me and I was too tired to go all the way back to Shibuya for food. As I made my way to the 7/11 mart, I walked past an empty restaurant with a man and a woman sitting at the bar. I walked in and the two people got up enthusiastically with magnified smiles on their faces. I turned around and walked out before they could say anything. I browsed the food at the 7/11 and decided to go back to the small empty restaurant. I walked back in and the two people got up again and rekindled their smiles. They shook my hand and sat me down aggressively and began interviewing me and the foods I liked. The boy began putting an apron on and stepped behind the counter of raw meat and fish. They introduced themselves to me and asked me what kind of music I liked. I said Bjork and they put on Bjork. "Meetsika, please try everything." the girl said with a certain seriousness. The girl told me her brother was "the best chicken maker in Tokyo". The chicken was in fact incredible. It was salty and gingery with an almost fishy flavor. I could've eaten 100 of the little pieces of chicken over rice and pickles. Mind you, I didn't eat much chicken in Tokyo  but I will for the sake of it agree the girl. The chef, who I found out early on in my experience, was her brother. He made me all sorts of food and she made the drinks. I still to this day haven't been able to pinpoint what exactly I was eating but it mostly tasted good.

 An hour into my busy meal, a man covered in tattoos walked in, soaked from the rain. He looked at the brother, sister, and I as if we were dead and seemed to be in disbelief that there was a customer. He took off his coat and sat down right next to me and lightly nodded his head as his introduction. The 4 of us all sat at the bar eating different foods and drinking endlessly. The tattooed man seemed to be maybe the brother and sister's cousin and was very quiet and still. He would smile upon making eye contact but that was the peak of our interactions. I barely speak a lick of Japanese and they knew only basic English yet for some reason the girl was very insistent on the topic of politics. I maneuvered the conversation back towards more visual things. The brother pulled out a laptop and connected it to the speakers and asked me to show them my favorite music videos and they will show me theirs. We stayed up till 4 in the morning, drinking sake and wine and beer and eating ice cream and watching music videos. I left and never returned but I'm glad that it turned out that way. I'm glad I went in there instead of taking home the onigiri from 7/11 which mind you is also a great option when in Tokyo.