Insanely short straw count: 1
Probably hookers count: 12
Thank you, Sal's, for being a pizza and pasta place that has more than just pizza-by-the-slice as a lunch special. I've got nothing against the slice. The pizza at Sal's is otherworldly. It's made from raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens and warm woolen mittens (which you would think would have diarrhea undertones and a summer butt-crack-sweat aftertaste, but it ends up being quite delicious). I'm just so easily distracted by pasta that if you put it on a lunch menu, I have to order it. There were ziti and manicotti and two kinds of ravioli and all kinds of spaghetti options as lunch specials. They had me at $6.95. I had the meat ravioli special, which came with bread and a salad. The salad, which was nothing special (just some iceberg, cucumber, tomato and olives with ranch), literally showed up one minute after I ordered it. After having worked in a restaurant for several years and also being a fan of the movie Fight Club, I always find this kind of quick service reassuring. Seems like there's way less of a chance that the food got dropped or spit/peed on in transit.
Next came the pasta love. I know you're wondering, and yes, they fuckin' drown that ravioli in sauce. It's awesome. When they first dropped off my food I thought they got my order wrong and had just put a bunch of red sauce on my plate (which, I would have been totally fine with since they gave me about a complete loaf of buttered bread)—but, no, they didn't mess up my order. Sal just created a delicious pasta treasure hunt for me. Musta known I'm a total carb pirate. I inhaled about 10 ravioli and four gallons of tomato sauce in two minutes. The hooker at the table next to me was impressed. Or maybe she was trying to offer me some kind of lunch special that I'm sure wasn't on my menu. Or maybe she wasn't a hooker and she was just a nice woman who chose not to shower recently and who likes to wear thigh-high rubber boots because they're comfy and they were cheaper than galoshes. Sadly, I didn't hang around long enough to find out.
