Ratatouille

Every trip to New York is truly an adventure. My recent jaunt up to the city was no exception. The real fun started on Friday night as my mom and I were discussing what to do for dinner. My mom decided she wanted to venture down into Little Italy, which sounded like a great idea to me. However we didn't have internet access, so we decided to call up my brother to have him look up a good restaurant for us. In retrospect, this was really our first mistake. I will never stay at a hotel without free wifi ever again.

Before I jump ahead in the story, my brother went online and gave us the name of an Italian restaurant that sounded pretty authentic. So we headed downtown, and made our way to the restaurant, which looked innocent enough on the outside. The moment we stepped inside, however, I knew we had made a mistake. First of all, immediately upon entering the door we were hit with the shock of cigar smoke. And lots of it. The front of the restaurant was filled with, what could have been a movie scene. You know the one where the Italian crime family owns the family restaurant and they all hang out there. Anyway, at this point it was too late to turn back around. All eyes were on us. We smiled as we followed blindly into the back room where there were lots and lots of empty tables. Never a good sign. But we sat graciously at the table far in the corner against the wall. We both wore our uncomfortable smiles bravely.

As I was trying to decide what to order, a gruff Italian woman came over. I asked her what a 'potato pasta dumpling' was. She replied with, 'You don't know what a potato dumpling is? It's good. You have to order it." Regretting my asking, and not wanting to create any unnecessary trouble, I went with the potato dumpling pasta... still pretty unclear as to what a potato dumpling was. Before I knew it, our food was sitting in front of us, and I was pleasantly surprised. I actually liked my potato dumpling pasta with pesto. But as I took the third bite, that changed.

I was looking towards my mom, when out of the corner of my eye I saw something scurry. Before I could even identify the scurrying object, I was out of my chair. I confirmed loudly for the entire restaurant, "THERE IS A MOUSE RUNNING TOWARDS OUR TABLE." And as I'm on my two feet, visibly terrified, a man working at the restaurant was just standing there looking at me. He made eye contact with me. Appeared unaffected. Then, my favorite detail, he just walked away. He didn't even acknowledge that anything occurred.

At that point, to my mom's embarrassment, I decided to perch on my chair so that my feet wouldn't have to touch the ground. Meanwhile, my mom was giving me a play by play of the mouse's whereabouts. I was not comforted at all by the fact that he had taken refuge in the wall. Especially knowing it was the wall adjoining the kitchen. I really felt like I had somehow mistakenly stumbled into the restaurant in Pixar's Ratatouille. Needless to say we make a quick exit and it is going to be awhile before I rekindle my love for Little Italy.