Writing Resources from Fifteen Minutes of Fiction

Fine Dining at the Mall

This may sound pathetic. It may sound odd. But my family went to the mall for fine dining! What fun! What an adventure to go to the food court, and try cuisine from all over the world. On a Friday evening, the four of us would get in the car and drive to the mall. On the ride over, we would discuss and negotiate which country's delicacies we would try that night. Would it be Chinese? Italian? Mexican? American? Japanese? When we got there, we would ignore all the stores, no matter how many sale signs were pasted on the windows, no matter how current the fashion in the displays. We made a beeline for the food court and the restaurant we had chosen. We would take our plastic trays and order our food, then find a table as close to the center as possible. Then we'd chow down and people-watch. It was kind of like eating dinner in front of the TV.

I can't remember exactly when this ritual ended. Probably about the time my sister and I finally had enough money of our own to go to the mall for more traditional reasons. Eventually we became sophisticated enough to realize that mall food is not exactly gourmet cuisine. But I will always have fond memories of those Friday night dinners at the food court.

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