Monday

Being surrounded by interesting restaurants presents a number of special difficulties I'm a little reticent to mention since being surrounded by interesting restaurants is also something ridiculous to complain about. First: after locating so many good eating places (I offhandedly count nearly thirty), it's sometimes difficult to continue locating more. This even though I imagine it's probable that my would-be favorite area restaurant languishes undiscovered. But, at the end of the day, why rely on the unknown? Second difficulty: I even have trouble selecting where to eat from merely four choices, just for myself. Two of us choosing between so many places often results in an elaborate, platonic conversation of shifting advocacies. Sunshine is usually more interested in trying something new (the first difficulty above is hardly universal). We both favor someplace nearby, without resorting to Vietnamese food too often. The criteria for our conversational positioning is different on different days. Tonight we ate at Haandi, an Indian restaurant of, I feel, unpredictable quality. I preferred a more recent discovery: a Vegetarian Indian place called Saran, located in a seedy concrete strip mall with bad parking. Today I favored Saran for its extensive, mostly untested, menu; its quietude in comparison with the popular Haandi; and because, frankly, everything I've ever eaten there has been superior to other area Indian food things. I overlooked the fact that it is necessary to make a difficult left turn across busy Lee's Highway to park in its crappy lot. Sunshine favored Haandi for, among other things, her ability to order dishes containing meat there. I should stress that this is never an argument; it's a conversational exploration before resorting to the car. Ultimately, Haandi was glowingly fabulous tonight, Sunshine didn't eat any meat, and I had terrible difficulty navigating the parking lot. [Cavin]