All of our favorite restaurants are closed.
Maybe that should have been the indicator? Or maybe it was.
First was that sushi place across the street. We went there so often. The waitress (because there was just one; except for that one time on a Wednesday night when there were actually other customers there for once, and there was a college football game on the televisions, and that the whole energy just felt weird), she KNEW us. She saw us before we’d said I love you. She saw us date, fall in love, get engaged, and get married. Then we couldn’t go, of course, while you were pregnant, and it closed before our daughter was born, and now it's the brunch spot that I hate.
But I guess that’s not the first one? Because there were those two burger places we would order from on Fridays, and the one place that had the amazing ribs. We really had a delivery problem long before the pandemic made sure everyone did.
We found a new steakhouse once, even went to the soft open, but they weren’t open very long. But we loved it while it was there.
The stir fry place! I don’t know when it closed, but I know it was important. That’s where we ate the night after our first fight. Or while our first fight was happening. We went back in happier times, too, though.
But there were more places. The brunch place that’s now a burger place, the country western bar with the really good pulled pork that’s now a pizza place, the regional burger chain that’s now a boba place, even the national sandwich chain by our house where I would go pick up a Saturday lunch for us that’s now a nail place.
But there are two that I still can’t get over.
The seafood place where we ate the night we got engaged. The one with breakfast cereal stocking their bar. The location of so many of our date nights. Do you remember that time you forgot your leftovers and I drove all the way back to get them for you? You don’t, I know, because I asked you about it over a year ago and you didn’t recall even then. And maybe that’s why we just couldn’t work in the end. Not that I could have ever expected you to be as horny for nostalgia as I am, but you were only ever worried about what’s next, and I never want to stop remembering what was.
Then there was the last domino. The biggest, in a way. That little French fusion place on Lincoln. The one we were dating over a year before I took you there, even though you lived so close to it. My first favorite restaurant in the city. One I found by myself, where I would go with my best friend (who I had a huge, disgusting crush on). I think you wondered if that was a special place for me, with her, and that’s why I waited so long to take you there? I actually don’t know why I waited so long. But when we did finally eat there, you loved it. We would go there for dinner, we had brunch there (even that one time with your friends, it was SO crowded), we went there for Valentine’s Day one year. We were going through a rough patch at the time. And we took our daughter there. I still have a picture of her laughing and eating poutine with her hands, gravy all over her face. You knew it closed well before I did, because when I told you about it, you said, “Oh yeah, I heard about that.” You couldn’t have told me? But again, I know it didn’t mean as much to you as it did to me. None of these places did.
And I should have seen it. Because it truly feels like each time one of our favorite restaurants closed, there became just a little more distance between us, between how we view the world.
Not that I’m bitter! We both grew in a way that didn’t leave room for one another, and our city grew in a way that didn’t leave room for “us” anymore. It’s so easy to see the parallels as the world where we were in love slowly faded out.
All of our favorite restaurants are closed.