Joe M.
Yelp
I want to love honeygrow. And there was a time, I think, when I did. But as the takeout orders have marked the passage of years gone by and I have counted my half-eaten containers like the leaves of a fig tree, I have come to the unsettling conclusion that honeygrow does not love me back, at least not in the way that I would like to be loved: with grace, consistency, and love in the struggle.
Yes, the pickup is wonderfully easy. A row of little brown paper baggies sitting on the shelf is a wonderful sight to behold, because I know that my food is nestled among them, still warm from the fire, and I love the heft of the bag as I curl my knuckles around its and lift it from the shelves like a satellite launched into space.
But how many times have I placed it in the seat of my car, with my seatbelt firmly secured around its bulk, to discover, upon removing it, the faint outline of an oily stain worked into the upholstery, and drops of sauce trickling from the bottom of the bag like the angry children of a cumulonimbus cloud? And how many times have I sat down at my table with anticipatory visions of tofu stir fry stimulating my salivary glands only to pry open the white tongues of the cardboard container to discover that my meal, submerged in a watery, slightly viscous brown stock which tastes like earth, is perhaps more like a soup than a solid? How many wilted and sad yellowed broccoli florets have limpidly splayed their floppy limbs out to me and secreted the smell of a burning car engine?
Too many, I say. Too many. I will carry these memories with me forever as a testament to the honeygrow horrors that I have endured.
What is most striking about my experiences is their utter lack of predictability. Sometimes, a stir fry will be a stir fry, and a damn good one at that. Other times, it will be a soup, or there will be no sauce at all, and the base will crack and crumble like the surface of a parched arid desert. Sometimes my meal will combine the perfect notes of sweet, sour, spicy, and salty to create a beautiful gustatory sonata; other times the smell has assaulted my nostrils like a maliforous miasma and I have felt the sphincters of my esophagus involuntarily pucker in self-preservation. Oh honeygrow, how you taunt me. And I, in my budding self-confidence, have finally had enough of your games. I deserve a consistent lunch partner. We all do. We all deserve just a little bit better.