Her mother parked in front of a dingy, squat-looking building, Sue’s Diner. Brian turned and rolled his eyes. Melissa mouthed back, probably get food poisoning.
"Let’s go, guys!” Darlene peered in the mirror and patted her short hair,
the color and texture of corn silk. “Don’t judge a book by its cover. I’ll bet
the food is terrific.”
Stiff and cramped from the long ride, Melissa and Brian slowly emerged
from the car and entered the dreary building. Brian poked Melissa, and her jaw
dropped.
For a small, lakefront village restaurant, throngs of people packed the
dining room. There were men in overalls and plaid shirts or business suits;
women wearing faded, print dresses; and kids in jeans. Darlene asked the
gum-cracking, pony-tailed hostess for a table, and the girl led the trio to a
booth by the picture window overlooking Main Street. Melissa slid close to the
fingerprinted window and glanced down. Clear tape sealed cracks in the vinyl
blue-green seats. The table’s smooth top was speckled with gold and imbedded
with coffee stains.
From "Bryony."
The one and only restaurant in the fictional fishing village of Munsonville, Michigan, Sue's Diner made a regular appearance as a Sunday blog for a couple of years until Rebekah and I became too busy for long Saturday cook-ins.
Huh?
You see, The BryonySeries has an official cookbook. It's called Memories in the Kitchen: Bites and Nibbles from "Bryony" and it features recipes for all the 1970s and Victorian food references (divided by scene or them), along with historical references.
This cookbook is, and always has been, a fundraiser for Big Brothers Big Sisters of Will and Grundy Counties.
Each week, Rebekah and I would prepare a recipe from the cookbook and post it on the Sue's Diner page on the BryonySeries website, which Timothy built piece by piece to look like an actual menu from Sue's Diner - if Sue's Diner was a real place.
Rebekah and I made a goal of bringing Sue's Diner back after the holidays - and then one of my cats - Midnight - and me, needed procedures done in the same week.
Now that we're past all of it (we hope), our plan is to cook one BryonySeries recipe a week and share it with you to try at home.
But don't wait too long. The "recipe of the week" disappears in seven days - to be replaced with a new one.
Please join us virtually in the kitchen.
Read a "restaurant review" of Sue's Diner. here.
Illustration by Kathleen Rose Van Pelt for "Bryony."
