Tabouli and Aesop

I found myself eating lunch at a place today I had never been. As I sat there enjoying every forkful (and handful) with some of my favorite friends, I kept thinking of a familiar sign that hung on a store on one of our well- worn paths, “Driven by 1000 times? STOP!” This particular place we “lunched” boasts no reason to make you really want to stop except maybe to check and see if the patio furniture is drive-by treasure with which to fill the back of your car. My thoughts when I have read their sign that says, “Let us cater your next event,” have been, yeah, because no one wants to eat IN there. The stones are dingy. The landscape is far from manicured or even tended to and like the honored birthday girl today said, “You don’t even know where the door is!” The one door I did find didn’t even have a doorknob. I was glad to find it ajar. Once inside the seemingly small Jazz Café on Montgomery (or is it Birchman?), I found a big room with very stark décor but a lively place whose tables were surrounded by ladies just out of Bible study, businessmen on a lunch break, students enjoying, well, another break and my sweet friends celebrating a birthday. We ordered the sampler of hummus, tabouli and tzatziki (za-ZEE-kee- thanks, KS) which impressively disappeared just moments after it arrived. (Moms in the absence of kids can really pack it in.) I learned today that “tzatziki” is that traditional yummy white yogurt sauce served with gyros and other Greek dishes. When we were in New York in August, Jeff and I were fascinated by the incredibly LONG line that would form behind this one food cart outside our hotel. I mean EVERY night people would wait in line for whatever they were plating up. I saw other carts along Broadway and Avenue of the Americas serving the same food but not with lines like this one commanded. One night as we were headed back to our hotel I gave in to my curiosity and asked someone in line what the big deal was. The young man’s answer was simple. “They have the best white sauce!” Okay. So, it was the tzatziki that caused this long line every night. I regret not standing in that line to formulate my own opinion. I couldn’t help but wonder how the Jazz Café’s white sauce would fare on the streets of New York City.
Anyway, today was a nice surprise as it was for the other girls who had never darkened the mystery door. In our attempt to celebrate a 31st birthday, I think we were all quite distracted by the Black Bean soup and the gyros (with ample “white sauce” on the side). Briefly, we tossed around comments about the place’s appearance and came to the conclusion that if they didn’t need more business, why would they spend the money and effort to fix up the place? It made me think of a fable we had read the other day that the moral was, “Fine feathers do not make a fine bird.” And so in the case of the Jazz Café on Montgomery and Birchman, it’s “feathers” are no reflection of its deliciously yummy food!