Victory!

That which was mine is mine again.

I went to the mall with Lamb. We bought some stuff and window shopped.

When we hit the mall portion that is the site of my greatest culinary defeat, I told Lamb I wanted to go by the sushi place and sneer at them.

Lamb was only mildly mortified at the thought of being humiliated by her dad despite my noting (accurately) that I could feel my eye twitching as we approached the desecration location,

You may or may not recall (I'm sure I've mentioned this here at some point) that about a decade ago, our local mall suffered a great loss when the donut shop closed.

It was a glorious donut shop. It actually made the donuts while you waited.

You watched the machine dump the dough into a river of hot oil where the proto-donuts travelling downstream become donuts, where they were dumped out automatically into a bin where you could have various sugary concoctions sprinkled on your fresh donuts.

I get misty eyed just describing it.

Then the unspeakable happened. The store closed. To be replaced by a sushi shop.

There is no deep frying in sushi.

I hated that sushi shop deeply. I burned with irredentist fury these many years.

And then at the mall with Lamb, as we approached the location where I could ritually curse the usurper, I saw the sushi shop was no more.

I would not know my reaction except that Lamb recalled it word for word.

I said, "It's not a sushi store! I don't know what it is, but they fry something!

Indeed they do fry something. I don't recall the store name, but they fry all matter of potatoes, cheeses, and formed pressed chicken.

They have chili cheese fries, people.

And so, after a long decade of sushi Hell, my people--the Fry Cooks--have reclaimed our lost land.

Oh yes, I shall return.