This is all I could think of when the waiter put this down on an adjacent table.
'Oh, it must have been wonderful to live in Italy!'
'I would love to live there!'
'THE FOOD.'
I don't talk about it much in my conversations with people in America, when it comes up, this is what I hear the most.
And, well, sure.
The freshness, affordability, quality and safety of the food was unparalleled in my relatively narrow life experience.
What has it been like to return to America?
All of those four aforementioned food characteristics have...changed, and honestly, not for the better. I'm trying to become desensitized to the prices (not happening yet!), the plastic encasement of nearly everything 'fresh' (because the industrialized food complex shipped it several days ago from some far-flung places), and the diminished flavor of many favorite vegetables.
But it would be foolhardy to stop at that, to paint the whole American (and my subtext: the American food) experiment with a broadly negative brush.
Rather than become obnoxious about how there was so much better than here, I'm endeavoring to regard here for its charms...for what it affords us that we struggled to have, previously, there. Because in all honesty, there was a mixed bag.
Life is generally, unavoidably, and truthfully, a mixed bag.
So what are here's charms?
Diversity.
I'm not talking about having access to fast food or corporate chains. We didn't miss those during our six years abroad, and we're not seeking them out now.
By diversity, I mean:
Internationality
(is that a word?)
Now, I can't assert that where I live can somehow top a place as internationally diverse as, say, New York City. Ironically, the availability of authentic Italian places in Atlanta (and by authentic, I am not thinking of Italian fusion or high-end white-napkin pricey Italian that would be largely unrecognizable to the average Italian citizen...I would sooner honor 1st or 2nd generation traditional American-Italian if that was somewhere in Atlanta, but I haven't found much of it beyond a great pizza place near Georgia Tech) is not....large.
And I'm not aware of many distinctly traditional, northern European cuisines on offer here either.
But Asian, Southeast Asian, and Latin American?
Hand me a rock. Dare me to throw it without hitting one of the huge number of cuisines from those three areas.
I live in Chamblee, a kind of northeastern part of Atlanta, which is still inside the big 285 loop, but decidedly not like the gorgeous old neighborhoods of Victorian and turn-of-the-century mansions that dot Midtown Atlanta. It's also not a historically affluent location like, say, the Buckhead area. And it's not necessarily attracting the escalated influx of Milennials and Gen-Zs with rehabbed neighborhoods or funky, walkable areas with new mixed-use developments, either. (although during our six year absence, wider, more connected sidewalks, a fledgling rail trail, the addition of more commerce and independently owned businesses...plus those mixed-use building projects...are more numerous, so the creep is real).
Instead, our new Here has small, mid-century houses in some neighborhoods, a fair amount of somewhat older, no-frills apartment complexes, the exclusively corporate and hobbyist Peachtree-Dekalb airport, a number of old auto factories in adjacent Doraville (now morphing into a massive set and soundstage complex for Georgia's hustling and humming film and TV production business), some former industrial buildings converted into lofts (I live in one of those), faux lofts, remaining small businesses like plain, brick-walled restaurant supply shops and auto repair, and...a quiet enthusiasm for growth.
These factors alone prompt our revision of what living here in America could be like. We can now walk to dinner, to both high end grocery and big box stores. Previously, we could cross the street to board MARTA for a ride to a shopping mall or a sports venue or the High Museum of Art. Now, we can enjoy our most immediate neighborhood on foot, too.
A short car ride can take us more broadly around and into what is only indicated from one small sign on the southbound interstate passing through Atlanta as the 'International Village.'
An internet search for this yields some highly uneven results, with some plans for a park not far from my home that must have been postponed indefinitely (another Covid casualty), the name of a private school in the area...and little else besides:
Mission and food tours.
The mission tour place asserts that within the 5 mile geographical area I call home, 761 different languages are spoken and over 145 different people groups work, worship, shop, eat and live.
The front of what's known as the China Town strip mall. New Yorkers, you aren't allowed to snicker at this. Or at least mute yourselvs, because we are deciding to love our authentic neighbors, however we find them.
The rationale for food tours of this area - which includes the mythical 6 miles of Buford Highway - called 'Chambodia' by some locals (Anthony Bourdain visited it in his last series) - which hosts countless strip malls with an extraordinary array of signage sometimes in both English and a secondary language, but often in just that secondary language...jewelry and fashion shops, salons, churches, bodegas, herbalists, bakeries, grocery stores and farmer's markets, and naturally, restaurants - is so believable that I can't quite believe that there aren't more of them.
But maybe they too were a Covid casualty that will slowly revive?
In our excitement about visiting a Southeast Asian grocery store at the Patel Brothers' strip mall in Decatur, a bit south of Chamblee, we planned to shop and then dine at the biggest of the restaurants there...we went on a Saturday. If you don't like crowds, then you could call this a mistake. Hordes of families were shopping at the same time.
But if you want to see how the community 'weekends,' then a Saturday trip is in order.
You just have to wait in line.
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| A hoodie-wearing, earpod listening GenZ's grocery haul for the upcoming week. |
We walked to the grocery at China Town, and so we kept our shopping excitement to a minimum. But it is there that we welcomed chili crisp into our lives, and we are now as hooked as anyone else.
And we saved our cash for some righteous dumplings from a China Town lunch counter.
Up until some weeks ago, I had never been to a Mexican seafood restaurant.
The guys across the aisle from us ordered an enormous amount of food, including this bizarre concoction. There were dueling mariachi bands in each of the major dining rooms, populated with mostly working class families at tables populated with...
A sizable array of sauces. Because everybody has a favorite. And everybody, in this case, is multitudinous.
The portion size?
I would call it American. But nothing else felt non-Latin American about this.
OK, except for maybe the fries.
We did a little online searching for pho restaurants, found one of several highly rated ones in Chambodia, and dove in.
The vast menu is a deeply enduring mystery that I will need to dedicate much time to solving.
I love that.
I don't know that I could do pho during this hot hellscape of a summer, but back in March, it was lovely.
So, my answers to 'what have you been doing since you returned to the U.S.?' might vary, depending on the definition of 'doing,' but here is one answer, adapted from some famous lyrics:
I'm loving the one I'm with.
