Best Dudes

Okay.  Let me start this with a confession: I almost forgot to tell you that Collin was in town with Mallory for a few days at the beginning of Thanksgiving Week.

Many things happened, but let me tell you this: One night we went to Mission Chinese Food together.  Mission Chinese has tremendous buzz right now and, predictably, I love it--it's my inclination to say eating there my first time, a handful of months ago now, struck me the way Ssam Bar and M. Wells did on my first visits to them.

We had the Thrice-Cooked Bacon and Rice Cakes and the Salt Cod Fried Rice.

These days that Thrice-Cooked Bacon is just about the only thing I want to eat.

We also had BBQ Pig Tails and Spicy Pickled Carrots.

After dinner, a visit to Sugar Sweet Sunshine.  Cuz that's Collin's cupcake spot of choice.

And then we paid Andy a surprise visit.  Well, I wasn't a surprise.  He expected me.  Collin, however, he was not expecting.  It'd been probably two years since they'd seen each other but Andy didn't care, he got right down to business.  Collin didn't care either, he got right down to business, too.

Don't be scared, Collin.  It's just the wind!

Amigos.  I guess I should make some joke about having been to Mission Chinese and Andy's house in the same night, something about them both being Chinese and a thing/person that I'm a fan of, but the joke isn't coming to me.  And also I don't want you to look at these pictures and be all like, "Awwww, look how they're visiting the kid in the wheelchair." Because that's not what's happening, this is Andy, for crying out loud.  You show up at his house and you don't know what's going to happen, you might get taken to task, you might get a story told, you might work on vocabulary words.  It's just homies hanging with homies.  You don't think I'm a good guy just for hanging out with Collin because he wears glasses, right?

Anyway, I digressed.  Moving on with the photos . . .

And afterwards, on the way home, we got baby massages.

No we didn't.  Come on.

-Epilogue-

The next day I had lunch with Collin at Parm, knowing full well I'd be there the next night with my family.  What, was I going to deprive Collin of a meatball hero?

Had their Saratoga Club for the first time.  Holy cow.  This thing.  This sandwich is an absolute 10/10, A++.  Favorite new sandwich of the year?  Sure.  Why not.  I'll say that.  And I'm not even a guy who ever ever thinks to order a chicken club.  The recipe for this is in Lucky Peach #4, that's a recipe worth taking a long look at.