duck-shaped pain

But they're nothing like the restaurants I've encountered so far on the opposite side of the metro area. Big restaurants. Predictable restaurants. Menus planned by committee and narrowed down with the help of focus groups. Some people heartily scorn such places -- preferring the small, the charming, the unpredictable. Ultimately, I do, too, but I am still fascinated by some chain restaurants. Since there aren't a lot of them where I live, [1] they seem vaguely exotic to me. A chance to immerse myself, briefly, in a new culture -- in this case, a completely different class of white people than I've ever experienced before.

The Denver area is big on themes. Malls have themes, neighborhoods have themes, anything that can have a concept behind it does. The theme of the part of the metro area where my mom lives is Everything Should Be Big. The stores are huge. The houses are warehouse-sized. The cars are spacious and take up more than their share of a lane. The furniture is big, to fit the scale of the "great rooms" and cathedral ceilings of the oversized houses. Therefore, it follows that there should be a restaurant in the area to match. Which is where we went. The name of this restaurant doesn't even really matter, because all I remembered was its concept: Home of The Enormous Food.

My mom had gone to this place once before, on some occasion where she was not the one paying, and reported back to me about their prime rib. Now I love lentils, rice and other crunchy vegetarian cooking, but prime rib is the one thing that can turn me into an unrepentant carnivore. I love prime rib when it's cooked properly, which is to say, not cooked much at all. I like it when it's soft and juicy and very very pink, when my knife slices through it as if it were butter. Fortunately, such meat can be found at a place less than a five-minute drive from where I live, at a reasonable price and portion, so I am not deprived.

So we drive to this restaurant. It is located in a place that is frightening to me and to most of the other people I know in Denver -- at the junction of Quebec Street and C-470, right next to a big lighted sign that says HIGHLANDS RANCH. [2] Just like that - imposing capital letters and all. For those of you who live elsewhere, HR is Denver's most notorious suburb. A planned community of big houses, gated neighborhoods, wide streets and a clear sense of who does and who does not belong there. Just being close to there makes my head hurt. But I was here to eat and do A Study of the place, so I just ignored any general bad feelings I was having.

The place was cavernous. It had to be, to accommodate the meals we were about to order. But I didn't know this yet. It was decorated with faux Old West memorabilia -- rock hammers, saloon signs, bison heads on the walls. Cold potatoes and cheap whiskey seem like more authentic Old West sustenance than satellite-dish-sized steaks, but never let truth get in the way of a good theme. We checked in with the surly girl up front and got led to a seat.

The menu was large and difficult to navigate, yet someone showed up at our table almost immediately to see if we wanted to order. I hadn't even had time to look through the big book of drink listings yet, so I just ordered water to begin with. Which came in a glass that was difficult to hold in one hand.

I flipped through the drink offerings (lots of wackily-named drinks involving rum and many authentic Old West jello shots were available, as well as many different choices of Chardonnay [what does someone who likes white wine yet hates Chardonnay do in this sort of situation?]) and settled on a beer. It pleased me that they stocked Widmer Hefeweizen, a total ubiqui-beer up in Oregon, but hard to find where I live, so that's what I ordered. (Much to my dismay, the beer was a normal-sized beer.)

I realize that this is probably not uncommon, and that I am sheltered from such things by living in the middle of nowhere, but I was surprised to see that the prime rib was $23 for the small portion. [3] No weight or other hint as to the size of the small portion was given, but that didn't matter. I didn't feel like paying $23 for a meal, so I looked for something else.

My mom ordered the chicken fried steak. I ordered something that involved a chicken breast that was stuffed with (what else?) stuffing and glazed in some apple-whiskey sauce. It sounded good from the description.

While waiting for our meals, we observed other tables and the meals they were being served. The plates and portions looked large from a distance, but this didn't really register until our meals arrived. Even my mom, who had eaten in this same restaurant before, was alarmed at what showed up.

The chicken fried steak was misnamed. It was singular, whereas it should have been plural. There were two enormous pieces of meat on my mom's plate. Each of which could have feed two. My chicken breast was indeed a chicken breast, but it had been stuffed to the point where it looked more like a Balloon of Chicken rather than something edible. I poked it, hoping that it was full of hot air from cooking, but nope, the inside was all stuffing.

Each of our meals came with a schooner of mashed potatoes. My dog eats out of something smaller than the dish in which these potatoes came. The chicken fried steak came with a biscuit that could have been mistaken for a softball (a flaky, buttery softball). Mine came with a near-loaf of garlic bread. Plus, we each got an apple for some reason.

I don't even want to mention the utensils. The fork was large and heavy -- it was scaled to match the food, but it was almost impossible to eat with.

The food was good, but it was overwhelming. Who can eat that much food? Even my cousin J., who, in his adolescence, could really polish it off, couldn't finish one of these meals. Now I realized why the food was so expensive, which annoyed me even further. My meal could have been easily halved or thirded, and still been satisfying. I ate as much of it as was comfortable, and you really couldn't tell that any of it was now missing. My mom got about halfway into one of her steaks, and then stopped.

We ceased eating our meals at a comfortable point because my mom had told me how good their desserts were. I don't eat dessert a whole lot (too full, usually) but I agreed to give one a shot. She ordered one while I went off in search of their enormous restroom. [4]

When I came back, the enormous plates had been taken away (the food soon to return as big bags of leftovers) and in their place was another big plate, containing something large and yellow. Banana custard. Enough banana custard for an office birthday party. We each scooped some onto our "dessert" (read: normal-sized) plates and ate some. Don't get me wrong here, it was very good banana custard. There was just so much of it, all jiggly and yellow. At least we didn't make the mistake of ordering cake. I had been the plastic model of it on the dessert plate parked near our table, but then saw it in person when the table next to us ordered one. A slice of chocolate cake six inches long and four inches high�at least there were four people at the table to help out. We were only two, and as a result, there was much custard left.

Feeling beaten up by our food, we took our bags of leftovers and headed for the door. Many of the people leaving at the same time were also saddled down with a lot of food. Enough for two or three more meals. Enough to take up a lot of room in a fancy stainless-steel restaurant-grade refrigerator. Enough to make for some very happy dogs back home.

The whole experience was interesting, but sort of disturbing. Why so much food? It's not like the more food you have, the better it tastes. Most of the people seemed sort of wearied by eating there. An ordeal of steak. Trial by chicken. They didn't seem like they were happier or more satisfied by eating there. The idea of abundance seems more appealing than the particulars, I guess.

This is also a part of the city famous for its semi-muscular men and skinny skinny women. Lots of the latter were in abundance in the House of Enormous Food, all leaving behind enormous portions on their plates. Of course, there were salads on the menu available for those who wanted them. I passed one on the way to the restroom -- you could have easily hidden a toddler in one of their salad bowls. Many of these salads went uneaten, and who wants to take salad home?

Which is kind of a conundrum. Usually, a large amount of food (think buffets, dollar-a-scoop Chinese restaurants or other cheap, all-you-can-eat places) is considered rather d�class� on the class scale, and tiny, artful portions (three slender asparagus spears braided and draped over a succulent wedge of grilled sea bass, accompanied by a tiny spattering of red-pepper coulis [5]) are quite the opposite. Paying more to eat less -- that's a sign of real abundance, supposedly. So I'm not sure where The House of Enormous Food fits in. On one hand, it's expensive, so it gives off the appearance of quality, and you have no real option as to the size of your portion (no half sizes offered [6] So it's not like you chose to get that much food, thereby showing the world that you wanted to eat it all (showing want for food and then following through can be completely unacceptable to some) -- instead, it was inflicted on you and therefore, you should show restraint (and therefore, goodness) by eating as little of it as possible.

Or something like that.

Or maybe it's just that living in an enormous house and driving an enormous car has messed with people's senses of scale. Big tables need big salads and big forks to eat them with.

Either way, I don't know if I ever want to eat there again. The Indian restaurant we ate lunch at the next day seemed so small and welcoming by comparison, even through it, too, offered enormous amounts of food (buffet).

[1] A situation that seems to be changing as more people move in to the area. As the town grows, Meals of the Suburbs start making their appearance: fried onion blossoms, all-you-can-eat lobsterfests, Australian-themed steaks, etc. Because these things are new! and exciting! to those here, people flock to them for the first few months (or years, sometimes) but then slowly return to our town's innumerable tiny Mexican restaurants.

[2] Then again, it is across the highway from Krispy Kreme Doughnuts, so not all is lost.

[3] To contrast, the good prime rib a short drive away from me costs $11 for the smallest portion, which is small enough that you can eat the whole thing and feel like you've conquered the meat, but large enough that you feel satisfied.

[4] Sadly, like their beers, their restrooms were merely average sized. I would have liked to have seen a big, plush restroom, though. That feels luxurious, like someone actually cares about details, whereas a too-big restaurant or meal just overwhelms. No heated toilets or automatic flush, even. So disappointing.

[5] Or some other silly entr�e.

[6] A theory I have that has been proven true many times is that if a restaurant offers a half-order of anything, you should get it. There's a reason it's there.

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