Xanadu

This past weekend, my freshly minted bride and I embarked on a distinctly American tradition - going out for dinner.
While most of the rest of the world has neither the means nor the inclination to eat someone else's food in another house on a regular basis, we Americans manage to sustain ourselves this way and (sometimes) even look forward to doing so. Normally we like to cook for ourselves and think we're at least competent in the kitchen, but the holiday weeks were bad times to be stocking up on supplies and our stores were down to the ubiquitous frozen hotdogs (hey - they came in first in a Cook's Illustrated ranking, and are actually delicious) and some beans. Hence, M and I found ourselves motoring through our bucolic burgh on our way to progressively busier roads until we could find dining establishments of increasing scale and quality sufficient to meet our needs. This is when I realized that a lot of people in our area must do this sort of thing. As we passed one chain after another, every parking lot was packed with a thick Friday night crowd. There were lines. I didn't see bouncers, glitter, or sunglasses that make you look like a fighter pilot . For the citizens of 2 car garage/PTA bake sale nation, this is an event. This is not something M and I normally do. But we did. And we enjoyed it. It wasn't gourmet, it didn't have anything made with a foam and it was probably better suited to a coke than wine, but it did the trick (with leftovers!). When in exurbia...