emotional letdown

i love change

I don’t like change, I resist until it is literally forced upon me.  Even when that change is a positive one, it can be both time consuming and laborious, I, am lazy and sentimental, and am known to spend long hours thinking about the way things were.  This probably explains why I spent long hours recently reminiscing about life in Los Angeles.

Before Jaime and I moved to LA we lived in the University District in Seattle.  The U-District is the area surrounding the University of Washington and we loved living there.  Everything was within walking distance, there were dozens of great restaurants, three bookstores, two grocery stores, a farmers market across the street from us, and best of all the rent was cheap.  The upsides to the area made it possible to deal with the annoying downsides; the drunk college students, drunk homeless people, and the Ave Rats (drunk high school students who pretended to be homeless).

Then we moved to LA and missed our neighborhood, I spent long hours reminiscing about our life in Seattle.  When we returned to the U-District three years later it was like returning to a war ravaged Bosnia, only instead of bombed out buildings we found that everything had been gentrified by the Yuppie army.  Many of our favorite restaurants had been forced out of business by the rising costs doing business in a developing neighborhood.  What hit Jaime and I the hardest was finding out that our favorite restaurant had moved.

Mamma Melina’s was a little Italian family restaurant on Roosevelt and 50th just beneath the 7 Gables theater.  The first time we ate there Jaime and I fell deeply in love.    The building was old with authentic cracked walls, antique tables and chairs complete with the red and white checked table cloths.  It was like a dark little hole, perfect for a romantic evening lit almost only by candle light.  This was the kind of place where you could find pictures of the owner and his sons posing with the restaurants most famous patrons, Paul Sorvino, Jack Nicholson, Detlef Schrempf.

Tucked away in a secluded corner was a small piano and on many evenings an Elvis Costello look alike could be found pounding away at the keys. On one occasion I remember an accordion player who squeezed out requested songs while dancing between the tables.

To describe the atmosphere alone is to sell Mamma Melina’s severely short.  Their food was spectacular, like a hearty home cooked meal made by the Italian grandmother I never had.  My favorite dishes were the Veal Saltimbocca and the Ricotta Cheese Gnocchi, both were an explosion of flavor and texture.  The bread was truly unique and absolutely unmatched, Jaime and I would have to insist the waiter not bring us another warm basket.  Their wine selection was wonderful and poured with such delicate grace it made me feel like I was eating at a five star restaurant.

The prices were so reasonable that there was no need for it to be a special occasion restaurant, soon we were eating dinner there once a week.  Jaime and I both had our twenty-third  birthdays there, our third and fifth anniversaries, on Valentines Day and New Years Eve they had a fixed four course dinner.  Jaime and her girlfriends met there on Wednesdays for food and bottle after bottle of wine.  When they began serving lunch I could often be found sitting in the window enjoying pasta and writing in my notebook.

After a while the son who ran the restaurant began to recognize us and always made a point of stopping by our table and chatting, before we moved he told us how much we would be missed.  It was a wonderful feeling to be able to go some place we already loved so dearly and be treated like a family member.  The week of our wedding Jamie and I made reservations for a date night (our last as a non-married couple) we ended up inviting my parents and brother, it felt right to have my real family there.  Had I known this would be the last meal I would enjoy at that location I would have given the whole meal more appropriate reverence.

This last November we drove by saying to ourselves, “I can’t wait to go back,” only to find the windows covered with yellowed newspaper.  Later we were told they’d moved a few miles away, in a newly constructed building.  While people tried to convince us they were still the same great restaurant just in a new location, we were skeptical.  I wanted to believe them but just like the latest Star Wars trilogy or the Disney channel version of Doug, the original was better.

For five months I resisted the change not wanting to eat there wishing to remember it as it was.  Until this past Saturday when Jaime mentioned it as a dinner choice.  Neither of us were truly ready, we talked about Mamma Melina’s like she was an ex-girlfriend we hadn’t seen in public since the break up.  Not wanting to see her new sexy body or her new lovers who knew nothing of the incredible evenings we’d spent with her.

We bit the bullet, knowing that we couldn’t avoid it forever, knowing that she was still out there without having partaken in what she had to offer would just fill us with sadness.

Driving by her new location the changes were already appearing exceptionally dramatic.  Jaime leaned over and asked me if I was sure I was ready, she asked me but she was also asking herself.  I wasn’t, but truth be told, I would never be ready.

It was hard not to notice first how large she was, you could fit a dozen of the old location inside and still have room for the kitchen.  She was also sexier, with big white classic looking chandeliers, modern tables and chairs, and sterile gray walls.  It could have been one of a million restaurants anywhere in the country.  The only hint of her former self was the big Italian paintings which were now strapped to the ceiling tiles.

We sat down and I could literally feel my heart breaking.  Jaime who was trying to be positive about the whole situation could see my discomfort and asked if I wanted to just get a glass of wine and go.  I was determined to show that I could be accepting of change and go with the flow and declined her offer.

The menu had changed and fittingly my two favorite dishes got the axe.  Perhaps the most sacrilegious change was the bread which was generic and unremarkable.  I could almost feel tears welling up in my eyes, I expected and was prepared for change, just not this much of it.  The staff wore matching uniforms and moved about like well oiled machines, a far cry from the chaotic dance required to serve food in the old location.

Jaime and I reminisced about the old Mamma Melina’s, the wonderful times we’d had there and how absolutely nothing was the same, when a thought crossed my mind.  After we got to LA we missed our Seattle restaurants and left most places saying, “it was good, but no Mamma Melina’s.”  Over our three years there we found a new group of restaurants we frequented and began to love as much as those in Seattle.  Upon returning home we discovered that the world had changed around us, our old favorites now gone and ironically I was sitting in what once was my favorite restaurant missing places in LA like Birds, the Kitchen, Il Capriccio, and the Mustard Seed.

After the food arrived and we got some wine in us, my heart began to hurt a little less.  The dishes were still excellent, the service was very good and if I could separate the old location from the new, I found the atmosphere, while different, to be enjoyable.

When we’d finished eating Jaime and I agreed that while this new place could never be the same to us emotionally, I still could not think of better Italian food with better prices or service.

On our way out we ran into the son who runs the restaurant, he still recognized us and immediately I began to forgive the restaurant for all the disappointing changes.  I knew I needed to get over my feelings of loss and accept things as they were.  Our girlfriend had moved on, but that didn’t mean we couldn’t enjoy this new restaurant she’d become, build new experiences and enjoy her for what she was.  It seemed that the heart beating in this body was still the same.