For the new year I have rededicated myself to getting in shape after letting it slip over the holidays. The three day weekend was pretty successful, with several hours getting sweaty on all three. My mind popped back to college. Of course back then a weekend day workout was 8 hours of basketball and weight lifting followed by a night of drinking and a pizza. These days it’s 4 hours walking on the treadmill with a couple breaks.
And of course no pizza these days while getting in shape.
The Cottage Inn late-night special. Pepperoni square deep dish and cheese sticks with dipping sauce for 6 bucks. I’m pretty sure I still remember the phone number. And it was good pizza, not the usual college town dirt cheap calorie dump pizza.
Damn it sounds good now.
What’s the regular order from your past you have most burned into your memory?
The summer before I started college in St Paul, I had a temp job as a file clerk in a hospital. Most days, I was left alone in a room with a coffee maker and drank as much as two pots a day. When my work was done, I’d walk two miles to the nearest Target store and use my credit card to buy a bowl of chili with crackers, a bacon cheeseburger with lettuce and tomato, French fries, cole slaw, and a large Coke. To vary the menu, I would sometimes have a couple of jumbo hot dogs with ketchup and relish instead of the cheeseburger.
When I was in grad school in Milwaukee, I’d do all-nighters at the local Big Boy with basically the same menu, except I’d have Cherry Cokes and later follow everything up with dessert (usually strawberry shortcake with vanilla ice cream) and coffee.
Thirty years later, I have to choose between the chili and the bacon cheeseburger. No way I can eat that much in one sitting today!
Back in college, there was restaurant I would hit fairly often that made THE best Reuben sandwich. That and a side of fries with chicken gravy was my regular order.
The only one that’s ever been a “the usual” for me was bulgogi on noodles with cucumber salad. I’d wait until someone else at the table ordered “extra spicy”, and then I’d order “even spicier than that”. If something similar (like rice instead of noodles) was the daily special, I’d occasionally order that instead, and I’d occasionally do sizzling bi-bim-bob instead, but it was mostly “the usual”.
At the local burrito place (same style as Chipotle’s, but oh-so-much-better), there were about three different wraps that I alternated between, but it was always sour cream, both kinds of cheese, pico de galla, green salsa, onions, and three lines of “stash” (their habanero-based hot sauce).
The hot tuna grinder at Yorkside Pizza, New Haven.
Lettuce, tomato, melted “rat cheese” (probably a white cheddar) and tuna salad, “just enough tuna to hold the mayonnaise together,” on a toasted long roll.
The meatball and cheeseburger grinders were also good, but it’s the hot tuna I remember.
This is the Cottage Inn in Ann Arbor, correct? The last I had it, it wasn’t what you remember. You can’t go home again.
To answer your question: Chicken sub with Italian dressing and curly fries at Andoni’s after the bar, consumed with copious amounts of coffee and cigarettes. When they tore down Andoni’s and put up a bank, a little piece of my youthful soul died.
In college I ordered from maybe a half dozen pizza places but there was one in particular I liked because 1. They included peppers and onions free on any pizza if you wanted them and 2. They gave garlic butter for dipping before anyone else did that and 3. They delivered until something like 2 am.
For a year I worked in one of the school libraries from 6 pm to 12 am on Thursdays. The hours meant I would miss dinner so by the time I got out of work and home it would be like 12:30 am and I would be starving so every week on Thursdays that year I would order a large sausage with peppers and onions and it was delicious.
Heh. there have been so many, but the one that stands out was when I was in grad school and got Chinese food regularly. You know you’re in trouble when you walk into the restaurant and the hostess says “Hi! Sweet and Sour Chicken?”!
Oh and when I was a young teenager and got enough allowance for a bus ride to lunch at the Woolworth’s counter, I’d get a cheeseburger and onion rings, probably with a root beer.
Option 1: post-bar closing meat loaf dinner at the Coney Island lunch in Johnstown, PA, back when they still served full dinners. Meat loaf, brown gravy, mashed potatoes, navy beans; all this gustatory splendor for $1.25, with a RC Cola on the side. It was like a little trip back to 1935.
Option 2: All you can eat fried clams (Wednesday nights, IIRC) at the local Howard Johnson’s.
Option 3: Sunday morning hangover cure, consisting of a Double Whopper with Cheese and a large fries, at the downtown Burger King.
Tuesday’s special at the Lone Doughnut was chicken enchilada casserole. I have tried for years to duplicate it, have failed every time. They’ve been out of business for almost ten years, yet I still crave the casserole.
Chanticleer Pizza, small pepperoni/sausage/extra cheese on a Friday night when my daughter was with her dad. I haven’t been able to have “real” pizza with real cheese in almost four years, thanks to my stupid kidneys.
If we go back to high school days, it would be an order of sauerkraut balls and a half-rack of spare ribs at the old Tick Tock Tavern – legendary rib joint – on Clifton Blvd in Cleveland’s West Side.
Haven’t been there since the late 1970s. Looks like the menu got all fancy. It was a dive back then, but the ribs were damn good.
Way back in the long long long ago, and still is to this day, a bean and cheese burrito with sour cream and that salsa with parsley or cilantro leaf in it with chunks of onion that every Mexican place seems to have. Better than pizza.
