When the Pineapple Cake is Right Side Up in a World Where Everything is Upside Down or Kind of Sideways

I once had this girlfriend who was completely wrong for me. And me for her. Yet there were times I'd be with her even though I knew it was a bad scene.  Certain cravings. That's what the Izzy's restaurant in Everett is like for me. It has to be the worst in the entire 25 pizza/buffet Izzy's restaurant chain in the northwest. All the others I've visited were pretty decent. A cut above the typical larding zones of Old Country Buffet type dumps and a cut below real restaurants where servers bring you stuff you order off these reading food description things I like to call "menus."

I'd eaten at the Everett Izzy's only once before and the food was so abysmal, so poorly prepared, I swore I'd never return. Yet last night driving back from a wonderful weekend with the kiddos in Spokane, I was approaching Everett and debating where to eat. I'd blasted over in 4.5 hours and was hungry. I was leaning towards a quick Taco Time drive through then I remembered the Izzy's.  Once it was in my mind I had to go there.

Let me note that I knew the food would suck again. That I drove there understanding nothing would have improved. How did I know that? The first time was so consistently godawful I could tell it had a long proud history of horribleness. Dedicated standards of low quality control.

Why I persisted I'm not sure except I love two items from Izzy's - the pizza and the bbq chicken. Plus I was in the mood for a buffet, some personal choice of selection, some unbounded ability to rapidly load and reload like some Dept. of Agriculture officer in a blazing gunfight with angry slaughterhouse workers who know their jobs, their very likelihoods and mortgages and children's futures are at stake if the meat inspection officer shuts them down for slaughtering downer cows and scraping brain tissue and bone fragments off the abattoir floor for the hot links line.

It sucked. Even nastier than before. The coleslaw, I swear to God, actually had no dressing in it. The chicken was disgusting, the ribs even more so, the mashed taters were watery like a chowder almost, and the pizza was undercooked. 

The surprise to me was how packed this craphole was at 730ish, full of families and couples. Now, this joint is in strip mall hell and draws a rather rough and tumble looking crowd. In fact, it looked like family visit night at an overcrowded state penitentiary.  Large men with heavily and crudely tattooed forearms, tweaker women with hair like straw, obese and rude little children cutting in front of me in the dessert line. Like a program developed by some progressive prison superintendent where an exact replica of a buffet restaurant is built on prison grounds to help prisoners reunify with families as part of a structured reentry preparation program. A program that is uniquely promising except the superintendent is reconsidering whether to continue to use death row inmates as cooks.

I had my fill and left. The waitress ringing me up at the counter asked, almost sheepishly (because she knew the true answer), was everything ok? Yes, I whispered knowingly. Everything was ok.

I was satisfied. But only full in a base, overstuffed stomach sort of way. I wasn't completed by this experience, my soul wasn't nourished and my mind wasn't blissed. The pineapple "right side up" cake, with which I finished this gustatory plummet into the depths of my own personal sell-out hell, was dry and crumbly with no obvious pieces of pineapple (or even pineapple flavor) and an overwhelming taste of nutmeg or cinnamon, some spice used in enormously wrong proportions.

I regretted my decision to not cover the pineapple right side up cake with a big goopy mountain of the choco/vanilla soft swirl ice cream. And, yet for some strange reason, I also didn't. Because sometimes we try to cover up and ignore what we know is wrong for us, bad for us. Sometimes the soft swirl ice cream machines in life prevent us from realizing our authentic potentials via a clear and compelling understanding of our addictions and vulnerabilities. 

I'll be leaving Everett soon.  But it may be awhile until some things from Everett leave me.

Comments

[riggs]

Bob. Its me. Dave. The Stalker. I am here. Watching. I have to post first. Just to show you. Heh.

I roared over on the 4.5 fast roll as well, still suffering from Saturday PM's 6 pints of skullpop. Remind me to pull your hair and swear I'm not stalking you next time I'm trashed. But wait. I am stalking you. Heh. Hi. Its me.

The restaurant here is always open. Gimme a ring if food hell beckons and we will save you. Maybe. Hi. Just watchin. Waitin. Heh.

[D Huygens]

We here at the Izzy's Corporation (NASDAQ: IZY) are sorry to hear of your experience at one of our fine restaurants. Please accept our most sincere and heartfelt apologies. Enclosed is a coupon good for $1 off the normal $18 buffet charge on your next visit. Expires 3/16/2008. Thanks for your patronage. We value your business.

[susan]

Do they have sushi? I am always so scared of raw fish at crappy buffets. Who on earth decided that would be a good idea!

It is almost as bad as pinneapple upside down cake with no pinneapples. OH THE HORROR!!!

[glynis]

last week-end, driving home from hourrrrrs of my daughters dance competition, we were really really hungry. it was like this whispery conspiracy as we skulked into a fast food parking lot,this health food nut in a leotard, and her mom. i think we consumed 18,000 calories in 10 minutes of utter silence. but so funny, as maddi was deeply involved in her greasy cheeseburger she looked up and said 'oh mom! i GET it!' a rare indulgence but omg it was good!

[Janet]

Ghosts. Ghosts of Izzys past...