The Dreaming Game: Breakfast At Night

I recently spent a long weekend visiting my friend, Monty, famous on this blog for his pickles. It was an easy, unfolding joy to spend the weekend with him, to walk around the city where he lives and talk and talk and talk. Food was a focus of the weekend: succulent jerk chicken, Japanese curry poutine, tacos with grilled mushrooms and cactus. As we ate our tacos on a park bench with the October sunshine streaming down, I asked Monty: “If you were going to open a restaurant, what would you serve?”

With hardly a moment’s pause, Monty said, “Steak salads.”

The menu he envisioned would offer a Chinese-style, a Thai-style, a Mediterranean-style, a French-style steak salad, he said. Each salad was a balance of textures and flavors, an elegant variation on the theme. It was a delight to see the menu unfold out of Monty’s brain.

When it was my turn to describe a restaurant concept, abuzz with Monty’s infectious creative energy, I was surprised by how quickly I had my own answer ready: breakfast sandwiches, served late at night.

Where did that answer come from?

In undergrad, I had a class that ran from 8:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. Afterwards, sometimes we’d head to a local diner, Chick and Ruth’s, where I’d get a malted and the “Eggle Deluxe.” There was something magical about exiting the classroom where we’d been discussing philosophy for two hours and walking through the darkened town to the rush of hot salt and fat. I imagine my restaurant would riff on that magic.

I’m not going to drop everything and go open this restaurant, which I’ve decided to call Breakfast At Night, just yet, but I’m not content simply to fantasize about it, either. I want to play The Dreaming Game, to bring into reality as much of the restaurant’s spirit as I can, to design delicious, bright, intense sandwiches, and write about the process. I don’t know exactly what playing The Dreaming Game will mean, what aspects of the restaurant I’ll manifest, but here’s a start, a rough draft of the menu I’ve envisioned: