recipes – Anton Martin Smith Writer

By Anton Martin Smith Antonmartinsmithwrites@gmail.com or Martin Anton Smith@gmail.com

So I decided to step into the fray.

The chip shop people needed me.

So I stepped up to the plate, by stepping away from my usual plate.

Yes I was a regular customer – am still a regular customer.

So this proves it wasn’t a fatal decision relationship-wise.

I was just helping out, but it was still a little scary.

Sending food out in a timely fashion when all hell breaks loose.

Eateries are maligned by the snobs –

But lets call a pattie a pattie –

There’s not much more ‘short term higher pressure’ in business,

Than a restaurant or takeaway.

If a meals out in time you’ve passed,

If you add another ten minutes your ‘too slow’.

An no one cares if all the orders are coming in like middle-east missiles.

They only think of themselves and the clock – which is their prerogative.

So now here I was on the burgers, taking phone orders and wrapping the fish & chips up.

The phone orders were easy – people knew what they wanted & didn’t ask prices.

The burgers were a little more tricky – but I’d made plenty at home before.

Surprisingly I soon found out wrapping the chips was an exact science in itself.

If you don’t do things via exact steps – (namely, folding, cradling, centering) –

It all ends up looking like a teenagers (or an artists) unmade bed.

And the other major thing that was a surprise?

While manning the phones, I realized from the affect in the customers voices,

That the ‘every Friday kiwi fish & chips’ (& burgers & hotdogs etc),

Meant a lot more to people than I realized.

Hearing the childlike joy when someone lists a burger, a spring roll, a donut, a pineapple ring –

Was really something to behold.

It was then I realized that perhaps I wasn’t as much as a foodie as I thought I was.

Witnessing an adult still be able to have child-like joys was indeed my biggest take-away.

I’m glad I helped out, and I will do again if pressed under similar emergency conditions.

But all in all – I think it’s definitely better & more profitable on the other side of the kitchen.

Of course I should say I got yelled at a little,

The funniest being when I was slow on the uptake about Chow Mein does not entail having noodles –

This meant their was an an impromptu skit of “Yes we don’t have noodles but we do have Chow Mein”

The old adage of ‘if you can’t stand the heat get out of the kitchen’ is true.

Strangely enough this particular kitchen was amazingly cold,

Owing to it being mid-winter, a big kitchen and with the back door always wide open.

Incidentally I arranged to work for ‘food credits’ but don’t tell ‘the man’ about that –

It was a mutually beneficial arrangement between the two parties.

I’ve now eaten the credits entirely away – except perhaps a small ten-dollar plate of fish & chips.

All in all I’m glad I answered my local chippies distress call.

After all discomfort is where personal growth’s habitat lies…within reason of course.

And I’ve always dreamed of being a restaurateur one day.

And lets’s call a spring roll a spring roll – Being the YELL-ER is far better than the YELL-EE.

So far in life I’ve always been a YELL-EE.

By the time I shuffle of the ‘giant chip’ – it’d be nice to have the shoe on the other foot.

But I didn’t come down in the last fryer fat refresh – I know the truth is this:

Regardless of whether you’re a YELL-EE or a YELL-ER –

You ‘still gonna have to serve somebody’ – ain’t ya?

Yes – despite what the bozo’s on tv and the computer screens say –

We’re all just striving for a ‘better class of serfdom’ no matter how you slice ‘n’ dice the chip-shop onion.

So I’m glad I finally got around to talking to you about my ‘yesterdays news’ –

Or do I mean ‘todays fish & chip paper’?.

P.s. I forgot to tell you I dropped my mobile phone in the massive sweet and sour sauce pan,

WHOOPS! (it’s ok it was just a ‘burner’ anyway).

by Anton Martin Smith antonmartinsmithwrites@gmail.com

It’s time for some Pork Donburi with Miso Soup –

I think to myself as I cross the road.

The little Japanese eatery is now open late,

It’s a slice of urban chique in my sleepy-rural-small-town-hollow.

I wander in for value dinner, having spurned my regular Chinese haunt –

But only for tonight, just for a change.

For loyalty must be spliced with the spice of occasional dissent –

Less the proprietor becomes lazy toward you,

Less they take you for granted.

They must be regularly reminded you can still freely eat elsewhere.

Yes – in life there are always ‘games being played’,

& with age you realise games exist for good reason.

So, I order the Pork Donburi – nice ‘n’ spicey – with the miso soup, it goes down a treat.

On the way out I buy some cheap leftover counter sushi – the proprietor gives me some free chicken too.

I noticed that when serving the Korean man sang his words.

Now here-is-some-pork-donburi-for-yooou, now here is yooour change

I knew he was Korean, for I had asked him if he was Japanese, & he had corrected me.

I can’t remember how, but I ended up telling him that I was writing a novella.

I told him that ‘we writers’* often inject a real-life character we see out & about into our writing.

After I told him this, he said in child-like fashion (in a good sence) that he wanted to be put into my novel.

I told him that’s it’s mostly finished & the characters are set – but there was still a slim chance.

I warned that he’d to be interesting enough to be chosen to travel onto the pages of future fiction.

He said that he also sung Karaoke, aiming to gain my literary affections.

I said that that doesn’t cut it for a Novel, Novella or a Short Story – but he might make a poem.

“Poems are easy enough to make” I tell him.

He’s a good friendly guy, & his food is tasty & at good prices.

He probably works too hard yet everyday he still wears a genuine smile.

Which can’t be easy over the long term especially so with silence-loving-small-town-folk.

It’s only fair that I spend at last fifteen minutes whipping him up a free poem –

After all he’d given me some free spicey chicken, hadn’t he?

It’s a fair trade – spicey-but-still-tasty-leftover-sushi for some personalised-slice-of-life-poetry.

Plus, he’ll get a bonus smile next week when I read him his poem in person.

And if he surprisingly asks me:

“Praytell – why did this poem cross the road?”

I’ll know he’s not really the-singing-Korean-chef-with-a-Japanese-eatery-behind-the-counter-of-a-small town at all –

…perhaps something far far more sinister or perhaps even beautiful**

All-in-all I would summarise all this as the following spinning-newspaper-tabloid-headline:

“Deadbeat Poet Says Frivolities At The Asian Eateries Are Less Than Frivolous”.

*Yes, it sounds like I had my head up my own ass – I agree with you oh reader.

** when read in public this must be said with a theatrical nod, indicating an ulterior motive may be involved.

Tag: recipes

“Yesterdays News aka Todays Fish & Chip Wrappers” (Prose)

“Frivolities At The Asian Eatery” ( A Poem/Prose).