table for two, food for ten

Maggiano's (Washington, DC)
I have an inordinate amount of experience with massive servings of food. I gained most of this experience over the last few years in the "Dining Capital of the North Shore." Evanston, despite being ridiculously backward and despite having a sophistic hatred for Northwestern students, feeds people remarkably well. Noodles come out on food barges at Joy Yee's, Dave's Italian Kitchen offers meatballs the size of softballs, the deep-dish pizzas at Giordano's are basically cheese buckets, and, to paraphrase a Milan, the neighborhood Chipotle serves burritos the size of rabbits. Large rabbits. Day in, day out, restaurants all over Evanston do great business shovelling sustenance into slobbering, happy mouths. And there's some mystery as to why America has been getting fatter.

I eat it all. I don't look like I can, but I do. I am very rarely beaten by the size of the plate in front of me. I am a student of the boa school of eating; eat enough in one sitting to survive for a week. I just happen do it almost every day. The upshot of all of this is that I almost never fear ridiculous excess when it come to food. Occasionally, a server will look me over after I order and say "um... that's a lot of food." My typical reply is a snort and a "well, good. I'm a lot of hungry."

I had the same exchange at Maggiano's in DC, but my waitress didn't respond with the standard roll of the eyes and shrug. There was genuine "you don't know what you're getting into" sympathy in her eyes. Nagging doubt. But, she challenged my masculinity... as defined by how much I can eat... somehow... Non-males may never fully understand. Atavistic male response: "oh yeah? I'll show you." And I did. I showed her my complete and utter defeat. I lost to a veritable wading pool of Rigatoni D. There was so much of it. Towards the end I was futilely poking at my plate to spread the contents around in an effort to hide my shame. It didn't help much considering there was still half a tub of pasta to be spread around.

I'm not complaining; the food was ecstatic. Chicken, mushrooms, random Italian stuffs. Every forkful dripped with succulent greatness. It ranks as some of the best Italian food I've ever had. If I was ever going to be killed se7en-style, this would be the food to do it with. One last bit of heaven before an eternity of "Sweating to the Oldies" for talking smack about the Man.