Search Results for “tunney” – The Inquisitive Eater

Non-Fiction November 11, 2022

“Looking For A Neon Sign” by Alex J. Tunney

There is a Taco Bell not too far from the train station, the LIRR stop I used when I still needed to commute to work, that I remember eating alone at once. And if I was eating alone, it meant my mother wasn’t having dinner at home that night. Which means this was around the time my late grandmother was still able to take care of herself around the house without assistance. So, if I have my timeline right, that means I was still temping. I arrived at the Taco Bell, spent from both the day I had at work and the train ride home. The context is a little hazy, but the heavy mood is what makes the memory linger.

It all started to settle in when I had nothing else to think about except for the Taco Bell. When I realized that the Taco Bell wanted me there for a while, but only for a while. If the Taco Bell was a person, a relationship with it is exclusively hook-ups and not monogamous. The Taco Bell I was in thought I was cute and all, but I shouldn’t catch feelings.

Eating alone in one of these places brings with it an air of melancholy. Without other people or the comforts of home, it’s very easy to feel like nobody. No matter how full or empty a place is, you’re not really anybody to anybody there. The one person you might interact with is only dealing with you because they get paid to. You have their focus up until the moment you get your food and then they move on to another person. They’re cashiers, not waiters, and they have completed their duty. You can choose to order something specific off the menu (though, let’s be real, most of the menu is just rearrangements of the same few items), none of it was made specifically for you, it was mass produced for mass ingestion.

Fast-food places must be inviting, inviting enough. But they can only be inviting, only be enticing. Obviously, they can only sustain a person for so long with the food produced inside its walls. It was the rest of it that I was focusing on. These places look nice and pleasant, maybe using the right colors to suggest hunger, until someone like me thinks about it too much and it becomes plastic. The cleanliness is appealing until it becomes alienating. Besides, it can only be so clean with the amount of people that pass through its doors, everybody leaving behind the slight grime of their existence.

As I ate, I could feel the weird tension, the uncanny sensation. There are many places you aren’t supposed to stay too long at. Waiting rooms, for example. They’re designed to be comfortable. But the lack of permanence there doesn’t feel as harsh. The main difference is that the people there care how you leave. In these places, like the Taco Bell I was at, the atmosphere is thick with indifference. You eat your food and leave.

At least, that’s how I remember it feeling.

It was a period in my life that I knew could only last so long, but there was no sign of when it actually would. To describe the feeling: imagine the sensation of a loosening grip that somehow lasts for eternity. In those moments, I wanted nothing more to let go, to let the universe have its way with me and make decisions for me that I did not want to make. To have a physical place that let me in only to keep me at a distance seemed all too fitting, made too much sense.

Sitting with my past self in this memory, years away from it, I realize I have turned this moment into Nighthawks with Mild Sauce. I’ve let pathetic fallacy run wild all over my headspace. All that’s missing from this scene is a song plastic in its happiness playing over the restaurant speakers so the dinner could be topped off with some irony.

If I was able to physically sit next to myself in this moment, I would have put a hand on my shoulder and told myself that I was doing a lot. I’d tell myself that I wasn’t in purgatory with a drive thru, looking for a sign and finding only ones in neon. No, this was a slow crawl out of a figurative hole that would eventually become the start of a staggered climb upwards in time. And that I needed to eat my chalupa before it gets cold instead of turning it into a symbol.

This was not the aloof uncaring universe reminding me of my own insignificance, but the dinner I decided to have because I didn’t feel like cooking that night. I ordered the chalupa, not only because it tasted good (good, not great—it’s Taco Bell), but also because I liked how the texture of the wrap felt in my mouth and even how it crunched against my teeth.

Sometimes the only way through is to simply be, is to just do. So that’s what I did. I did the only thing you can do when you’re eating alone at a Taco Bell. I ate my dinner and left for home.

Alex J. Tunney is a writer in New York. His writing has been published in Lambda Literary Review, The Rumpus, Pine Hills Review, Drunk Monkeys, First Person Scholar, Fauxmoir, Complete Sentence, The Billfold and The Inquisitive Eater. One of his essays will be included in the forthcoming anthology Where To Hang The Hat: Storytellers On Sondheim from Alternating Current Press. More of his writing can be found at alexjtunney.com.

Non-Fiction October 19, 2019

“Crinkle Cut” by Alex Tunney

The Nathan’s Famous in Westbury, the one with the arcade in the back, has closed. It will soon become a Chick-Fil-A, if it hasn’t already.

In retrospect, there were signs it was on its way out. The last time I was there the décor looked like it hadn’t been updated since the 90’s with all the once lively and appetizing reds, yellows and greens now faded. The already modest game area seemed smaller and lacking some of the arcade cabinets it had in the past. An air of melancholy hung over even the happiest of patrons.

The most obvious omen was that the space wasn’t solely a Nathan’s Famous anymore. It was a combination restaurant, like a Taco Bell/Pizza Hut, that song-worthy Frankenstein’s monster mash-up, or the more sensible merger of a Dunkin’ Donuts/Baskin-Robbins. They had doubled those options by squeezing in a Subway, an Arthur Treacher’s Fish & Chips and a Ray’s Pizza into a space the franchise one had to itself.

While it’s understandable that it’s closed, I was still a bit shocked. My father and I had been there last October, during his annual visit from New Mexico, which must have barely weeks or even days before closing. It was the restaurant that he had taken me to every so often throughout the past twenty years, so a wash of nostalgia was in the mix as well.

What I thought was a small pang of wistfulness grew bigger over the following days. Slowly, the restaurant closing—that specific one—grew in meaning. Between remembering parts of my childhood, the location and the food, it made me realize that the place is heavily intertwined with the bond my father and I have.

Every meal with my father growing up was event. I say this not to diminish my mother dealing with the second shift of motherhood after work and all the meals she has made throughout my life. While she was working hard in that way, my father seemed to beat the sun to work and leave for home after it did, so I very rarely ate with him during weekdays. But every Saturday morning he’d treat me with the same meal: a cheese omelet, bacon strips and home fries. Maybe the eggs would be switched for pancakes and sometimes the strips were switched with sausage links. Whatever the combination I got; the overall ritual remained the same.

A lot of our bond has been built throughout these eating excursions. When my parents separated, I would stay with him on the weekends. We would go to Border’s, both of us reading something and quietly enjoying each other’s company; he would have a soda and I would get an iced tea. Or he we would treat me to either the local Burger King or this Nathan’s and give me quarters to play a few games. During my college years in Albany, he’d drive me home and back during winter or spring breaks, always stopping at the same service area along the I-87 to get something from Roy Rogers since they had disappeared from Long Island. Now that he’s living on the other side of the country, whenever he’s in town we go to one of the nearby diners.

Nathan’s has a relatively simple menu, based off their origins as a Coney Island hot dog stand. It’s mostly slight variations on hot dogs and fries. There are chicken sandwiches, hamburgers, onion rings and mostly anything you could think could be grilled or cooked quickly, but their hot dogs are what they boast about the most. Yet, I think they should be most proud of their crinkle-cut fries. It’s not that easy to cook right, to get the right crunch and crispiness, but when you do, its edible magic. You can taste the effort.

I associate that “what you see is what you get” straight-forward nature with my father. He’s an honest plain-spoken person, that plain speech having a faint Bronx Italian accent, of course. Doesn’t want much more than Dunkin Donuts gift card or socks for presents. Up until he retires next year, his job is in shipping and packaging. He’s someone who’s worn a suit twice in his life: once for his own wedding—being the 70’s, it was a light blue tuxedo and the shirt had ruffles—and then again for my brother’s wedding this year. Can’t really roll up your sleeves and do the work with a suit on.

The more I thought about it, what also made this place a locus point for our relationship was its location. Along a stretch of Old Country Road, along the borders of the hamlets and villages of Garden City, Mineola, Carle Place and Westbury, it’s just stores, malls, shopping centers and fast food restaurants. There’s an emptiness to area, not just at night when everything is closed and the parking lots are vacant but even in the daytime when people are bustling in and out. This retail row belies the residential areas beyond them.

South of Westbury, where my parents had lived before having us, and south of Garden City, past what is known as Museum Row which includes Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum where one of my uncle’s used to work, is the hamlet of Uniondale, where my father grew up.

During his visit that October, I asked him to show me around his old neighborhood. I was curious as I had cobbled most of history from the stories that he and other relatives had told me with the most famous of them being ‘the time I almost got arrested for wearing red pants.’ Some of these chunks of history were revealed to me as I grew older. This also includes the less flattering parts of his family’s past and the things he’s had to deal with. It was a chance for this area to become more than an idea in my head.

I also asked because I knew he’d be happy to do it.

So, I got to see the elementary school he went to. I saw where the house he grew up was. The watering holes. The hangouts. It was also a tour about the friends of the family that grew up with him there, the ones that are basically my aunts and uncles now. There were more stories and anecdotes; puzzle pieces giving me a fuller picture.

I don’t have the complete picture, though. Up until a few years ago, I was under the impression that he worked two long stretches at different companies when we were kids. Not so. There we brief spats of unemployment and odd jobs hidden from us. I think it’s around this time he was a line cook, but I’m not sure. I imagine him in a crowded kitchen, sweating in the heat while flipping omelets in a pan or flipping burgers over a grill. As someone with as much tolerance for heat as I do patience for cooking, its work I have the utmost respect for. The closest I’ve gotten to food service was my local bagel shop for a summer.

There are things I wished I realized when I was younger. Like, why he knew how to make breakfast so quickly. I know that I’m being hard on myself. You don’t know that you don’t things when you’re younger. Yet, I still feel blindsided by the passage of time and I’m now catching up with a deadline that could happen at any time.

Restaurants close. People go.

I know I’ll have more meals with my father. We won’t have that Nathan’s to go to anymore, but there are many diners and restaurants to take its place. I know he’ll always have a reason to visit because, at the very least, I know for sure they don’t make bagels and pizza the same way out West.

Alex J. Tunney is a writer currently living in New York. His writing has been published in the Lambda Literary Review, The Billfold, The Rumpus and The Inquisitive Eater.

Books & Media April 8, 2013

Book Review: Raising the Bar – The Future of Fine Chocolate

by Alex J. Tunney

The second section of Raising the Bar: The Future of Fine Chocolate by Pam Williams and Jim Eber, opens up in November 2010 with Art Pollard, of Amano Chocolate, a waking up in the passenger seat alongside his friend as they traverse the mountainous region of Venezuela’s Henri Pittier National Park:

The road narrowed as they climbed. Tight hairpin turns and blind curves seemed barely big enough for a single car to pass. And now it was raining. Torrentially. Rivers of water ran down the road and soon small landslides followed. The road doubled back on itself revealing a deep mountain chasm. Art looked to the bottom: a bus.

Gripping stuff, right? I thought so. A following paragraph continues on with the travelers as they approach the town of Choroni and sets a beautiful scene:

[…] As the rain diminished to a drizzle, the mountains and the Caribbean Sea expanded before the windshield. Huge strands of bamboo planted years ago to keep the original dirt trail from washing away lined the road. Tiny shops appeared selling arepas…

Why are Art and his friend making such a dangerous trek? To meet the farmers in Chuao village who have helped grow and develop cocoa beans, and to present one of the products of their labor: Amano chocolate bars. This a great way to start off the section—mostly concerned with the labor that goes into creating the fine chocolate, including the current economic, social and political situations concerning farming and the cocoa farming population—by hooking the reader and giving the topic a human face.

However, the book only stays with Art and the members of the Chuao village for a few opening pages. Then, the reader is moved on to another story. Introductions to the other three parts begin like this as well: a brief narrative hook focusing on a person that quickly transitions to a discussion of issues on a broader and more abstract level. The book uses Art for a quote or two but doesn’t return to his and villagers’ story. (Readers will be introduced to many people that are only used for quotes or brief narratives, so much so, that it gets distracting trying to keep track.)

Similar books intertwine narrative with knowledge, but Raising the Bar places information over story. It does so to its detriment, as evidenced in the first part, “Seeds of Change: Genetics and Flavor.” There, after the narrative hook is finished, the reader is thrown into a sea of acronyms and science with little way of understanding what it all means. Perhaps the reason for this can be found in the notice, prior to the book proper, in which the authors ask readers “looking for motives, morals and plots [… to] stop.” The authors, a veteran chocolatier and marketing writer, may have tried to avoid accusations of bias, but they also eschewed a narrative that would have given context to the information they provide and a forward momentum for the reader. The book is supposed to be a short overview, but it might take readers far too long to get through.

It also seems that Williams and Eber were somewhat unsure of the book’s intended audience. Instead of starting off with more accessible topics such as marketing and flavor—the topics of the latter half of the book—it starts off of by discussing genetics. There is also an inconsistent tone to the book: while it avoids a dry presentation of facts, the voice occasionally gets too informal—the occasional swear or a meta-reference to writing the book—that doesn’t gel with the rest of the writing. I began to wonder if the book was better suited for a niche blog than for a mass audience publication.

The presentation of the book aside, the information presented is invaluable not only to the avid chocolatier but anyone interested in food studies, or concerned with how and what they eat. It captures a spread of interesting trends in contemporary food culture: the increasingly curious consumer, alternative ways of farming, flavor experimentation and the application of genetics in food production.

There are stories to be told about the pursuit of better chocolate, better ways of making chocolate and narrowing down the definition of fine chocolate. But the authors could have gone deeper and further with these stories; they only hint at them. As a result, Raising the Bar is a great resource; unfortunately, though, it is not a very entertaining book to read.

Raising the Bar: The Future of Fine Chocolate was published by Wilmor Publishing Corporation on October 22, 2012.

Alex J. Tunney recently received his M.F.A. in Creative Writing (Non-Fiction) from The New School. He lives and writes on Long Island.

Non-Fiction February 18, 2013

Savor

by Alex J. Tunney

Past the microwave, past the stove, past the window, past the tall thin bookcase where my mother had her recipe books, and underneath the sky blue countertop were the cabinets where my family kept all the snacks. It was a small collection of chocolate chip cookies, potato chips and crackers. My mother had no problem with me enjoying these snacks; she had bought them for my brother and I, after all. It was me sneaking back for seconds and spoiling my dinner that she was concerned about.

Slowly and stealthily, I would stalk across the tile floor in my socks. Approaching the cabinet on a clear day, the afternoon sunlight beaming through the window would bathe the faux-wood doors as if to bless my consumption. Opening them would cause them to creak slightly, but it was attempting to unwrap the packaging that ended up making the most sound. I hated the tinselly crinkling sound that came with unsealing the bags— or sliding a tray of cookies out of them—both for its unpleasantness and that it might alert my mother to what I was doing.

I remember the red, blue and green bags of potato chips, each color-coded to match up with their flavor, and how these bags boasted such bursts of flavor in each bite. I remember the different types of cookies: some chewy, some crunchy, some lasting longer in milk than others. Each bag of potato chips would disappear in a week. So would the box of crackers. I was more methodical with the cookies, but no less indulgent. I would have three, sometimes four, occasionally five or, every once in a while, six cookies at a time.

I’d usually eat my afternoon snacks while I was watching TV. I enjoyed both activities pretty much the same way: listlessly. A mild tide of flavor would hit my tongue and I’d be lulled into a faint sense of pleasure by the blather of the television as it mixed with the sounds of chewing reverberating in my head. When I was eating, even out of routine and eating something I only partially enjoyed, I felt I existed. I felt that I was there.

The only thing I hated about all the snacks were the crumbs and dust that would stick to my fingers after I was done. I could feel each individual speck resting on my fingertips. The little sensations bothered me. I would immediately wash my hands and wonder what was for dinner later. It was like I had never eaten anything at all.

Of course, it wasn’t just snacks that I indulged on. There were the Saturday morning breakfasts with cheddar cheese omelets with a side of ham or sausage and buttered toast. There were the dinners of various pastas packed full of meat and cheese. There were the huge holiday meals with sides to sample and deserts to devour. My eyes always overestimated the abilities of my stomach. It all tasted too good not to have right there and then.

First, I was on a scale. Then I was on the examination table in my doctor’s office listening to him. The wax paper underneath me crinkled when I shifted around. He was explaining things to my mother and I. I don’t remember exactly what he said but I’m pretty sure the words cholesterol, above-average and diet were definitely used. There were definitely one or two charts.

Soon, the red labels on the milk cartons were replaced with the purple and blue labels of 2% and skim milk. The freezer slowly filled with Lean Cuisine, Healthy Choice and other microwave meals. The chips were baked, the crackers now had vegetables in them and the cookies all but disappeared. The bags and boxes were littered with big starbursts shouting Fat Free! or Zero Cholesterol! The food didn’t taste all that different, but to my prepubescent self, it felt like a punishment.

I realized that food had a weight and it had a price. In the following years, I began to eat less because I saw the hidden numbers in food. These numbers represented the amount of space I took up in the world. They were everywhere: on boxes, on scales, on clothes and on cash registers.

During a summer spent at college, I was determined to spend as little money outside of what the school had given me as I could. Each point a dollar, I limited myself to two small meals a day, mostly sandwiches, salads and yogurts, and I only treated myself to treats like Chinese food, burgers and pizza on weekends when the college was closed. I exercised more times a day than I ate. I began to shed those numbers believing that I was turning myself into who I was underneath those extra pounds. And I was. Yet, when I returned home briefly at the end of that summer, one friend said I looked gaunt. My mother said I looked like a ghost. Perhaps I had gone just a few numbers too far and had begun to lose myself.

It’s been years since the sneaking, some time since sitting in the doctor’s office and a while since shedding those numbers. I hesitate to say I have it all under control; a better way to describe it is that I have maintained a stasis. Occasionally, I still fall into my old habits.

Sometimes I put too much dressing on my salads. Occasionally, it’s an accident such as when the dressing spills out of the poorly shaped container. Most of the time it’s me trying to mask the taste of all the lettuce. I empty the red or white dressing over the green below like a bizarre downpour over a forest canopy.

Sometimes, I read while eating. It’s hard for me to focus solely on a meal in front of me. My mind will wander and the food alone is not enough to keep my interest. I often find my attention drifting towards a well-crafted piece of writing at the expense of appreciating a well-made meal. If I could chew words, sentences or paragraphs, it would be fine, but I can’t and I miss the diction and the tone of the food itself.

I have continued to develop my relationship with food: how to feel the texture of ingredients against my teeth and resting upon my tongue, to understand the flavors with my taste buds, how to appreciate sweets and how to appreciate spices. I have learned things about my body. I have learned things about other bodies.

I still count calories instead of cookies but now there is no more sneaking— no more shame in appreciating it all, no shame in the occasional indulgence. I am searching, in cabinets, refrigerators, city streets and restaurant menus in pursuit of something new or at least something slightly different from yesterday. When I find it, I savor what is there.

I have also learned to lick my fingers more often.

Alex J. Tunney recently received his M.F.A. in Creative Writing (Non-Fiction) from The New School. He lives and writes on Long Island.