Negative/Nostalgia (4 PM Grilled Cheese)

Eating off Babette’s Secret Menu is an at-your-own-emotional-risk activity.

All the food on Babette’s Secret Menu comes from the Crosley, the weird glowing refrigerator deep in the fathomless kitchen at the heart of the diner. Ordinary groceries go in, but what comes out? Only Babette knows for sure. 

Fact is, the secret menu items all have a little something extra in them. A special oomph that makes you briefly psychic. Or unusually empathic. Something like that. Suffice to say, people always have an intense experience when they eat from the secret menu. Not everyone comes back for more. Not everyone likes their food to be existentially complicated. 

You don't order from the secret menu on your first visit to the diner. But if you hang around long enough for Babette to start recognizing you as a regular, eventually she’ll offer you a sample. No hard feelings if you want to pass. The woman keeps the fridge door chained shut. That kind of thing challenges the palate.  

As a night shift regular, Babette invites you to belly up the counter, as she drops the customer service persona and dishes up items from her very own Secret Menu. Tonight’s theme is Negative/Nostalgia.

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4 PM Grilled Cheese: 

You are a teenager returning home from school on a yellow school bus. Your dad used to drive you, but you're too old for that now. Kids your age are self-sufficient, right? 

But as you walk down your street, someone waves to you from their front window.  It's Mrs. Guttierez, who used to take care of you when you were small. "You got so tall!" she exclaims when she sees you. 

Inside, she makes you the same grilled cheese sandwich she made every day for lunch the summer before you started third grade. 

After you leave her house you remember that Mrs. Guttierez died when you were 12. There is still a trace of sandwich grease on your fingers. 

Recipe: butter, white bread, American cheese, skillet, heat, done.

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The Darkest Blend: 

You were so young then. You believed in so much. Politicians who stood for real change. Love. Your own talent. But no matter how naive you were back then, one thing is certain: you were better at making friends. 

Fifteen years have passed since you last had coffee here with the whole gang. You can almost see them, bent over textbooks and laptops and newspapers at their tables. Sometimes you all left the coffee shop together and got dinner at the Thai place next door. Everyone you cared about back then, everyone you hoped with and laughed with and campaigned alongside has long since moved on. You sit outside at a wooden table under an umbrella and watch college students pass by, briefly indulging that complicated tangle of fondness and rage that youth and innocence inevitably inspire in those who have lost both. You haven’t done so bad for yourself, right? You haven’t wasted all that potential.

Dejected, you look down into your cup. The face that looks back at you from the surface of the dark liquid is not your own, but the face of your friend Sunny, who you last saw at this exact table, years ago. She waves up at you, grinning hugely. The resolution is clearer than a Zoom call. “Oh my god, you cut your hair!” she exclaims. You start to tell her how happy you are to see her again, but a breeze causes a ripple to form in your coffee. Sunny’s face warps, then vanishes. You wait awhile before a barista doing the rounds outside takes pity on you. “It’s a seasonal promotion,” they explain. “Oh, I see,” you say. You sip your coffee, which now looks nothing like your friend. It’s gone cold.

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4 AM Ramen: 

You hate when people say that you “sleep all day” in that tone of voice. You’re not lazy; you just get more done when you work at night. You also hate people saying you need to buy groceries like an adult and stop eating ramen. Every time you go grocery shopping this late at night, you feel like you’re in danger of getting permanently lost in the aisles, but how are you supposed to explain that? They all blur together, endless walls of brightly colored boxes and bottles and jars and bags. Or maybe your eyes are just getting tired from staring at screens. The path you trace with your cart is hypnotic, like maze walking. The last time you went out after midnight to pick up bread and coffee, you found yourself blinking awake in the parking lot at 6 am as the sun rose. In the passenger seat next to you was a large reusable shopping bag filled with 32 bricks of ramen in 11 different flavors. You haven’t been back to the grocery since. But that’s okay. People who think ramen is for kid just don’t understand flavor.

Three seasoning packets go into a pot of water (roasted chicken, picante chicken, creamy chicken), along with soy sauce, ginger-garlic, fish sauce, chopped scallions, minced garlic, mirin, roasted sesame oil, and sriracha. Add noodles to the broth and cook two minutes for a springy texture. Top with a slice of American cheese, one egg fried crisp around the edges, cilantro, the green end of the scallions, and leftover Taco Bell fire sauce packets.

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Floating Ice Cream:

For the first time in years, you’re on vacation. Your girlfriend’s entire extended family goes to the beach in a big group every year, and you’ve been invited to join them. You haven’t been to the beach since you were a child. You haven’t been around anyone’s family in years, and you’re afraid you won’t know how to act. “Relax,” your girlfriend keeps telling you, “you’ll be fine.” 

She’s right, it turns out. You have a great time. The week flies by. On your last night, there are root beer floats after dinner, and you and your girlfriend go outside to eat on the balcony and watch the sun set over the water. You’re surrounded by people who like you and accept you and don’t look away when they see you and your girlfriend holding hands. The vanilla ice cream floats atop your root beer, melting just enough to turn the soda creamy. 

“Don’t cry,” says your girlfriend, but you can’t help it. You’ve never been this happy before. You are living one of the peak moments of your entire existence, and no matter how fiercely you try to be aware of it, no amount of awareness can keep time from passing, or the sun from setting, or your float from melting in the heat. You might as well start eating it. You might as well learn to memorize the taste of sweet things while you have them.

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Abomination Casserole: 

Your mom is from the Midwest, so when the rapture comes, you're prepared. After all, you have a pantry. No matter how far you ran, you couldn’t leave your culture behind you. Fresh vegetables haven’t been available in weeks, and tonight you’re down to your last onion and half a bag of frozen mixed veggies. There’s still some fresh dairy, but everything else is canned, dried, bagged, or powdered. This casserole, you decide to christen Abomination Casserole, both because of Revelations and because you have done something truly unholy by bringing it into the world.

In a large mixing bowl you combine egg noodles, chopped onion, canned cream of mushroom soup, sour cream, canned tuna, frozen peas and carrots, Hidden Valley Ranch seasoning mix, and shredded cheese. When everything’s wet enough, you scrape it into a 9x12 and bake. The result is a tuna noodle casserole so dense, so cheesy and tangy and herby, so exactly like a sour cream and cheddar potato chip dipped in ranch dressing but as a casserole, that it’s for the best the world is ending. No one should ever eat this. No one should ever know about this. 

Of course, you take personal responsibility for destroying the evidence. It can’t harm you. If this casserole proves just one thing, it’s that your mom was right all along: you really are the antichrist. Hail Satan and pass the garlic bread.