Phil Elmore: Individual Authoring Services

I Am Yolanda
Beth and I Journey to the Middle East

There's a woman named Yolanda... something... who writes restaurant reviews for the Weekend section of the local paper. She's incredibly picky and endowed with almost supernatural abilities. She can tell if a given ingredient in her entree was ever, at any time, in a can -- and she can tell if any part of the lunch eaten by the chef who prepared the entree was ever in a can. It is Yolanda's disdain for waiters who scrape plates at the table, her distaste for pie served clammy from the cooler, her utter contempt for lettuce that is not crisp, that I find inspiring. Yolanda knows what she wants, and she wants it promptly, thank you.

It was with Yolanda as our inspiration that my wife and I sat down to dinner in Syracuse's newest Middle Eastern restaurant. The site on Erie Boulevard has hosted several failed business, including an unremarkable Italian eatery. After dinner at the Hooka Market, I am convinced the very soil is cursed. Not just Native American Burial Ground cursed, mind you. No, I'm talking about earth so cursed that you'd have to baste victims in Satanic Goat Porridge and bury them alive in drums of toxic waste while reciting Latin from moldy spell books (discovered in creepy curio shops in Chinatown where they have those furry proto-gremlins in handmade wooden cages on a shelf in the dankest, darkest corner of the store) before you'd even approach the level of cursed that must pervade the soil on which this restaurant sits.

We entered the restaurant and stood before a small podium. A middle-aged, Middle-Eastern woman lurched out and glared at us. The International Glare of Welcome was accompanied by a muttered query as to the number in our party. The two of us were led into a large, clean, table-filled room, where we sat by a window. As we waited for the hostess to bring menus, I watched a fat man in a stained white t-shirt talking on a cellular phone in the nearly empty parking lot.

The only other patrons were a pair of businessmen across the room, and a forlorn man sitting alone near our section. His table was littered with the refuse of a large meal, including several used place settings. "Miss?" he mewled plaintively, his voice hoarse. "Miss?"

I wondered if you could get hallucinations from contaminated Middle Eastern food. Worrying about contaminated food is one of my hobbies. I don't recommend it.

The hostess reappeared with menus, nodding curtly when we gave our drink orders. The man at the table nearby began waving his arms weakly. "Miss? Miss?" The hostess scurried off, floating above the floor in that manner shared by Young Republicans, personal injury lawyers, and demon-possessed clergy in B-grade horror films. The man held his face in his hands and started to cry.

I contemplated the menu for a time before settling on falafel and a chicken pita sandwich. My lovely wife and I gave our orders to the hostess, who responded with the internationally recognized Glare of Order Receipt and glided off. "Miss? Miss?" I heard behind us. As I watched, the man at the nearby table began knitting a crude flag from his cloth napkin, using Tahini sauce to spell out SOS.

Beth and I waited for our dinner while I ate triangles of pita bread. The hostess left us a basket of bread that would have fed Sally Struthers or an entire village of Biafrans for a holiday weekend. I was through most of it when she came back, bringing Beth's main meal and my appetizer.

"Uh," I started to say.

"MISS!" the man nearby shrieked, waving his crude flag.

The hostess took a spoon from my table, threw it at the distressed diner, and began gliding away.

"My family has left me!" the man pleaded. "Can I please have my check? I just want to go home. I miss my wife and kids so much..."

"I bring your check," the hostess said in clipped, accented tones.

"Thank you," the man whispered. "Thank you, Jesus. Thank you."

My falafel was very good, but I was disturbed by the main meal/appetizer mixup. A few minutes later, the hostess floated back, bringing me a large plate with a sheep head on it.

"Thanks, I'll just take my check and--" the man began. He watched in horror as the hostess deposited my sheep head and left without bringing him the small slip of paper on the Little Plastic Tray of Freedom.

Beth looked at me. I looked at the sheep head.

"This could be my chicken pita sandwich," I said, "but I'm not sure."

"It doesn't look like chicken," Beth said.

"But I'm no expert on Middle-Eastern food," I hesitated. "They might prepare chicken a little differently."

For the next half hour, I waited for the hostess to glide back so that I could ask her about my sheep head. The man at the table nearby grew increasingly desperate, using what remained of his cola to write notes to his family on shreds of tablecloth. He began gnawing at the window near his table, trying to make a hole large enough to pass the notes through.

"Do you need a knife, sir?" I asked.

He snarled something, obviously reverting to his feral state from so long a period of neglect.

The hostess eventually did reappear. She paused to sneer at the feral diner before bobbing in place at our table.

"Uh, this isn't the sandwich that I ordered," I said.

"Sheep head?" she nodded at the head. "Sheep head."

"Uh, well, yes, I'm sure as sheep heads go it's a very nice one. There doesn't seem to be any chicken in it, though."

"Gyro?"

"Er, well, no, I don't want a gyro," I said. "I ordered a chicken pita sandwich, and I got--"

"Sheep head," she beamed, smiling for the first time. She was very proud of the head, which stared at me without comment.

"I ordered--"

Suddenly, the hostess was gone, gliding her way back to the kitchen with my sheep head. "I just wanted it removed from the bill," I said to the empty air.

"Somebody help me!" croaked a voice from the table nearby.

Beth and I got ready to leave. The hostess returned bearing a check on a plastic tray, and the feral diner wept with relief. He crawled toward the register at the front of the restaurant.

"Come on," I said to Beth, "while she's cornered."

We reached the register before the feral diner. He whimpered something I couldn't hear.

"You wait," the hostess said, and disappeared again.

"No! Please, God, no!" the diner cried.

An old man appeared. He was obviously the hostess' husband. I explained to him that the sheep head was to be removed from my bill. He responded with the internationally recognized Glare of Non-Comprehension.

"No sheep head," I repeated, gesturing at the bill.

"Sheep head," he said proudly.

The hostess returned with a small sheep head in a plastic container.

"Free dessert," she said.

"Great," I smiled. I paid, withheld the tip, and left a few paces ahead of the rag-clad feral diner.

"Lousy bastard," he whispered at me.

I joined my wife at the car. "Dessert," I said, holding up the plastic container. As we watched, our fellow diner left the building. His children had built a fort out of the family minivan, and had descended into a sort of "Lord of the Flies" state of being.

"It's a long story," the diner muttered. He then had to pause to explain who he was, and why they should let him in the car.

As we drove home, I wondered what Yolanda would have made of the experience, and whether she might not simply have dropped dead from shock.

"The moral of this story," Beth said, "is never to go to a restaurant that's only been open for a month."

"Sheep head," I smiled.