wilcox, arizona

ah, the age-old "where the fuck do we eat in this shit-hole of a town?" dilemma.

note pizza hut in the distance. there was, in the other direction, a mcdonald's and a kfc.

it would be an injustice to the american way to suggest that these places only offer chain restaurants--there was, just next to the hotel, a place called "plaza restaurant", its menu enthusiastically offering up bistro-style platters of home-made dogshit. this brings to mind an axiom of independent american dining: that it is invariably awful, and you're better off ordering a pocketful of blueberry muffins from the nearest starbucks.

it'd also be an injustice to call wilcox, arizona a shit-hole of a town; it's more like a shit-hole of a truck-stop, with a few houses scattered around tentatively around its perimeter. but, truth be told, i'm a big fan of shit-holes, and an overbearingly enthusiastic fan of american ones, specifically. in the spirit of charlie brooker i'd assert that there isn't much to say that's interesting without outrageously prejudiced negativity--just like no-one ever gets the hots for a nice girl.

the best thing that can be said about these places is that they're close to mexico. naturally, mexican food is the chomping man's saving grace: it's healthy (provided you avoid menu items described as "smothered"), it can usually be covered with chilli, and it's cheap as figurative chips. in a place of astonishing barrenness, plates of guacamole, peppers and onions are like edible oases.

see: salsa fiesta! the cheeky little pepper, its eyes boggling with joy. and the colours! a spa of vim and vigour by another name, surely.

oh, yeah, and the sign cheerfully advertising mexican and chinese food: crassly, craply, cross-continental--but in a place like this not much less than an advertisement for ambitioned ambidexterity.

as if things could possibly get better, this was the salsa bar:

why an entire bar is set aside for self-service salsa is beyond me, particularly as it seems to requires a lakeful of imported ice to keep its imperishable chilli contents perfectly, er, chilled. well, whatever. "howdy" to you too, you spreadeagled, cross-eyed, platypus... chick.

here's a shot of my taco salad. i'd already eaten twice in the day by this point, in mid-afternoon, so i wanted something light, and... you know, based on lettuce.

and there it was. and here it was, ten blearly, unfocused minutes later:


draw your own conclusions, i guess.

seizure salad

gordon ramsey's plane food should be the shittest restaurant in the world, for several obvious reasons: gordon ramsey is involved, but has certainly never stepped foot in the kitchen; it's in an airport; and it's full of assholes like me. however, once you get past all of these factors, and take yor seat 'neath what could well be the worst ambient lighting ever, it's actually quite nice. primarily because it's cheap and, you know, unfussy. for an airport. oh, and the caesar salad looks like this:

boy! squidgy egg yolks really turn me on. and check the croutons: hand-hewn from sandstone by stakhanov himself.

i don't know the first thing about caesar salads. they're like martinis in that affectionados will judge their merits and demerits with reference to an obscure century-old code. irrelevant, but entertaining. so how does this rate to the original caesar salad, famously invented by man-with-the-plan julius one idle day in 1793 while taking a bath in cleopatra's fetid breast milk...? i'd say... a 7.3, with added marks for the acrobatic bacon.

it is, as you can see, covered in spunk. it turned out to be anchovy-flavoured spunk--which, if you're walter, is the worst kind of spunk. he doesn't like seafood at all, due to an unfortunate incident in his youth involving a swimming pool, some loose-waisted board shorts, and a truck load of cod roe. and so his salad was left mostly untouched, while mine was polished off with quasi-genocidal relish.

jack is afraid of plain food (truly the pun that keeps giving), so he ordered the "i'm a fussy little shit" takeaway-picnic. it turned out that gordon had actually been in the kitchen at the time, as he left this little note:

what a guy.