Post It was Sunday afternoon. On our way back from Costco; we were hungry but didn’t know it. Thinking that all we wanted was a cup of coffee, Karen suggested this spot, Hudson on East Marginal Way, a relatively new joint that was supposed to serve up a good cup of Joe. We walked in and looked to our right, a table of Georgetown motorheads drinking Bloody Mary’s an Beermosa’s, to our left a horseshoe shaped bar with a couple of empty seats. The place looked like it had been around for 30 years, but all the surfaces were new. We sat at the bar and decided upon opening the menu that maybe we were hungry for eggs at three in the afternoon. Nothing jumped out at me. Passively I considered the pulled pork omelette, but then the woman next to me got her food, a blackened salmon sandwich with hashbrowns. Hashbrowns with a sandwich, that was the key that opened the pit of my stomach. I looked at the food and simply said “hashbrowns, mmmm good”. I moved from hungry to famished then I turned to Karen and said, “I know my order”.
Somewhere between the time I ordered and the time my food arrived 15 minutes later, the woman next to me finished hers; she ate fast. I knew that just as I would shortly experience my first bite, I would also with experience my last. I wondered if she was satisfied, if she would recommend ordering more. There was no reason to dwell on it. My time would come and I would know. When my sandwich arrived, I experience a spark of joyous appetitic expression as I saw the giant chunks of salmon barely contained inside a kaiser roll bun, sitting monumental on the edge of a sea of browns. I was about to dig in but saw the Louisiana Crystal Sauce on the counter. I grabbed it, and poured it over the potatoes. My fork always goes for the hashbrowns first. The first bite made me even hungrier. I took another and then grabbed for my sandwhich. Knife in hand, I cut it in two. A 4 cubic inch volumetric mass of salmon fell out and onto the browns. I stuffed it back in the sandwich, finished my cut and then took my first bite. Perfect. Perfect salmon on a bun, covered in remoulade sauce. It couldn’t have been better, but I still pushed my luck to the limit and applied another dousing of the Louisiana Crystal. Even better. The entire meal probably took me 25-30 bites plus the intermittent chewing. I don’t know really, I didn’t count, it’s a guess. When it was time to finish I was 99% satisfied, not really hungry, but simply a lingering desire for more consumption. I knew that the moment had come to cherish the last bite, and as I did, I stared at the crumbs and remnant onion slices with a finality mixed with hope that I would experience this again. Across the bar a man ate a burger and next to him a couple ordering something for themselves. I looked at them as a mirror of my own recent history, and with a slight envy of their present and future meals drew what you see here.
I drove down to Tacoma today with the intention of drawing a couple of images around the harbor. Of the three I drew, this is the only one I’ll post. It’s not that I wouldn’t show the other drawings, but let’s just say that I “experimented” with a technique on one of them and the experiment did not yield the proper results. The other drawing was a quick sketch of a Sounder train that had an unfortunate encounter with a drooling Great Dane.
