Good Food, Bad Aftereffect

Our first date was supposed to involve Ethiopian food. The night we met, we discussed cuisine and I mentioned I'd never had the opportunity to try it. He asked me if I'd like to have dinner that week, and I accepted. Then he waited too many days to call, my week got booked up, and the only available slot was brunch on Sunday. Hence, no Ethiopian food.

Five months later, The Young Man and I finally got our shit together and made it to Meskel, the recently-opened Ethiopian joint in my hood. The place is tiny, and it was packed, so we had to wait a few minutes for a table. I lamented the fact that the place was BYOB and e'd left the bottle of wine at home, but he assured me I'd probably live without it.

We ordered an appetizer, a meat combo and a veggie combo to share. Everything was delicious, but so filling we couldn't finish a lot of it. This bummed us out, because we rather enjoy food. We pondered whether we could take it home and eat it later, but decided that the injera would get too soggy. So we abandoned it, paid the bill and headed to Blockbuster to pick up a copy of Talladega Nights nights. Halfway through the movie, something began to happen in my digestive tract that indicated there might be a problem in the near future.

That problem, which was sudden, violent illness, struck both of us shortly thereafter. I'm not one to trash a restaurant, because it's a tough business and people have to work hard to become a success story and hey, everyone has a bad day, right? And the food did actually taste quite good. So consider it a cautionary tale, because I care about you and your digestive tract. On the bright side, I think I lost three pounds, at least.