i feel like there's usually a subtext, in the "this restaurant is in a building that definitely used to be a pizza hut" observation, that the restaurant is probably mids, or at least one could easily overlook it as a genuine option while chuckling at the Distinctive Structure. for what it's worth however: there's an italian place around here in a building that i literally used to order pizza hut from before they closed. while the internal vibes of the place are comically off (the low ceilings of 90s-pizza-hut architecture do not fit with what one expects from a dimly-lit-except-for-candles-on-the-tables italian place) the food is fucking magnificent
The stranger a building is that a restaurant is in, the better the food, that's the law. Annapurna is in a fucking basement and is cramped and weird and the decoration can't hide the fact that it's a decaying basement in a commercial building in Seattle but it's absolutely incredible
this is a fucking fact. eating at annapurna feels like you might be participating in a mild crime, like some kind of unlicensed establishment. i went there with two other people once and i think i was stuffed under a shelf and getting elbowed and almost knocking over the table the whole time, but every bite was pure ambrosia
the last time I had fried catfish was in the summer of 2018 when I got lost; with a dead phone, on my way to a swamp, in south arkansas
i pulled up to a gas station hoping someone could let me use an outlet to charge my phone long enough to figure out where we were
we were hungry and a little stressed out (getting lost on your way to a swamp will do that to a person) and while i initially spent a moment skeptical of gas-station-catfish, having spent years of my early life living around the general area, i thought "why the fuck not"
and my god, it was the best fried catfish i'd had in a long time
everyone there looked like they'd been sitting in there for decades without moving, this place was frozen sometime in 1998, covered in taxidermy deer trophies and wood paneling
